If early voting trends continue, Trump will become president: Halperin

As early voter turnout breaks records in key battleground states, large numbers of Republican voters are showing up, potentially paving the way for a victory for former President Donald Trump, according to veteran political journalist Mark Halperin.

Speech in Tuesday’s episode Morning meeting On the podcast, Halperin discussed reports that Republicans are outperforming Democrats in early voting, particularly in battleground states like Nevada and North Carolina.

“If the early voting numbers stay as they are — and that is a big risk — we will almost certainly know who will win before Election Day,” Halperin said.

“Make no mistake: If these numbers hold up in the states where we can partially understand the data, we know Donald Trump will win on Election Day,” he added.

Before Trump opposed mail-in voting in 2020, he spread baseless conspiracy theories about the process and encouraged his supporters to vote on Election Day instead. However, the party is again urging its voters to cast their ballots early, with Trump endorsing the change.

“I tell everyone to vote early,” Trump said last week on a radio show hosted by conservative Dan Bongino, who has widely spread false claims about early voting and the 2020 election.

Republicans appear to be responding. In North Carolina, where Democrats had a lead in early voting of more than 30 percentage points at this point in 2022, they are ahead by just one percentage point this year.

In Nevada, where Democrats have traditionally relied on strong early voting to counter Republican turnout on Election Day, about 1,000 more Republicans than Democrats cast early ballots this year.

Despite these trends, the impact on the election remains unclear. Early voting data only shows party registration, not how voters cast their ballots. The makeup of early voters can change from day to day, and the apparent trend toward early voting may change once ballots are counted on Election Day.

While Halperin cautions that these early numbers could be “overestimated,” he also pointed out that every analyst he has spoken to in the last 24 hours has said that Trump’s chances of winning are very high if this trend continues continue.

“If this continues, Donald Trump can’t lose because the Democrats can’t do well enough on Election Day,” Halperin said.

Sean Spicer, co-host of the podcast and Trump’s first White House press secretary, weighed in on the trend, attributing it to three factors: the purge of voter rolls in many states, effective voter registration efforts before the election, and the influence of problems and governance their side.

“It’s almost like preseason – it was important to register people, get them excited and stay in touch with them,” Spicer said.

The return to bipartisan early voting has broken records. North Carolina and Georgia both reported record turnout on the first day of in-person early voting, and that increase has even spread to states like South Carolina, which set its own record when it opened early voting on Monday, even though it did not in the presidential election level was competitive.