Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Why we must win for school choice
Bill Clinton Accidentally Makes an Ad for Trump in Disastrous Kamala Harris Campaign Speech
Kamala Harris Humiliated After ABC Debunks Her Dishonest Attack on Trump - 'Even More Pathetic'
An appeal to non-voting Christians
The impenetrable arrogance of the left media
The National Border Patrol Council publicly endorses Donald J. Trump for president
Hollywood's hit-job film on Trump bombs at the box office
Monday, October 14, 2024
Victor Davis Hanson: The Strange, Mythological Campaign of Kamala Harris
Why Columbus Day Remains a Foundational American Holiday
Does God Have A Plan For Trump?
Enough ‘spring forward/fall back’
Past Presidential Polls Provide a Big Clue About November 5
Saturday, October 12, 2024
Why are Democrats so determined to keep non-citizens on the voter rolls?
Conservatives Must Preserve The Electoral College
Gretchen Whitmer Accused of Mocking Billions of Christians with Pro-Kamala 'Communion'
Friday, October 11, 2024
Barack Obama’s racist, crude day appearing on Kamala’s behalf
The Left owns our institutions, but we still own ourselves
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Who Raises Your Child — You or the ‘Village’?
Biden-Harris Admin Hit with 1-2 Punch: Retirees and Homebuyers Won't Like This
Kamala Harris' 'Blue Wall' Crumbling Before Her Eyes - New Battleground Poll Shows Incredible Trump Surge
The media pushes nonsensical migrant narratives
Democrats don’t have a message that appeals to or resonates with voters
Hurricane facts vs. climate fiction
Ron DeSantis shows the country how it's done
Could the Hurricane Response be Election Interference?
Wednesday, October 09, 2024
Communists Out of the Closet
CBS News continues its decades-long decline into the leftist muck
Is 2024 America’s Last Election?
Tuesday, October 08, 2024
Kamala Harris Says There's 'Not a Thing' She Would Have Done Differently Than Joe Biden in the Last 4 Years
So I'm not the only man who doesn't get Kamala
Trump has a stellar economic record, Kamala Harris has an execrable one. So why are voters mixing them up?
Recent Events Force Us To See The Reality Of Today’s Democrats
Monday, October 07, 2024
FEMA an Even Bigger Disaster Than the Storms Themselves -- and How it Can Be Replaced
Kamala’s Katrina Catastrophe
How to abolish the US Department of Education
October 7 Opened the Floodgates to Antisemitism from the Left, Bringing Back the 'Socialism of Fools'
We Are Less Ready For A Global War Than America Was In 1941
Sunday, October 06, 2024
It’s time to abolish FEMA
As I sit here on day 10 of hurricane-ravaged western North Carolina with no power or water ...
Saturday, October 05, 2024
Friday, October 04, 2024
An illegal alien crime wave is washing over the country
Axelrod gloats that North Carolina's Hurricane Helene victims in pro-Trump areas may be unable to vote
Hundreds of National Security Officials Cite the Bible While Giving Trump a Crucial Endorsement
The Secret Service and election interference
Thursday, October 03, 2024
Former Chief CBS Correspondent Can't Believe How Far Network Has Fallen After Debate Fact-Checking Debacle
Lowman S. Henry: Forget the Polls These Are the Numbers that Matter
By Lowman S. Henry
The 2024 presidential election is rapidly becoming the most polled election in Pennsylvania history. As the most important battleground state political observers scour every poll taken in Penn’s Woods for some hint as to the status of what again is likely to be a very close battle for the commonwealth’s 19 Electoral votes.
Almost without exception, every poll has Donald Trump and Kamala Harris within the margin of error. As such, the drama that surrounds every point or half point change in the polling has made for interesting parlor speculation. But, polling is so imprecise and the race is so close that the polls are in fact meaningless in terms of discerning who is winning the horse race.
There are three other sets of numbers that carry far more significance than polling and as such should be watched far more closely than opinion polls.
One of the key predictive factors as to how a person will vote is their party registration. At one time there were over 1.1 million more registered Democrats than there were registered Republicans statewide in Pennsylvania. By the November 2020 presidential election, the Democrat voter registration advantage had shrunk to 685,818 voters.
Fast forward to September 2024 and the Democrat voter registration edge has been sliced in half since the 2020 election – down to just 338,396 voters. Tellingly, 48,618 Democrats have switched their party affiliation to Republican; two and a half times more party switches than Republicans to Democrats.
Although Democrat registrations gained steam after the party switched out Joe Biden for Kamala Harris Republican registrations climbed even faster. Putting a cherry atop the registration sundae for Republicans Beaver County near Pittsburgh, Bucks County in the Philadelphia suburbs, and Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania flipped from blue to red. No county has flipped from red to blue.
Democrats have dominated Republicans in mail-in balloting since the advent of no excuse mail-in voting in 2020. Here too Democrats are underperforming. As of September 23, there are 360,101 fewer Democrat applications for a mail-in ballot than at the same time in 2020. Republican mail-in ballot requests are down by 60,963 giving the GOP almost a 300,000 voter net advantage.
Another major change is the GOP’s approach to mail-in balloting. While the party fought and attacked mail-in voting in 2020 it is embracing the practice in 2024. In 2020 many Republicans – 141,000 – who applied for and received mail-in ballots failed to follow through and vote. It is likely some number of those voters instead went to the polls in person, but there is no doubt a large number of GOP votes were literally left lying on the table.
There are concerted efforts to ensure those votes are cast this year. Projects like the Pennsylvania Chase have deployed an army of 120 full-time paid door knockers who are fanning out across the commonwealth to make sure voters send in their ballots.
Finally, there is the impact of the Green Party. In 2020 Democrats successfully convinced the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein from the November ballot. The Green Party’s nominee for state Auditor General received 78,588 votes in the 2020 General Election while the Green Party nominee for state Treasurer received 81,984 votes.
Keep in mind Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. Making the plausible assumption that most of the Green Party presidential votes ended up in the Biden column with Stein off the ballot and that decision alone contributed significantly to the Biden victory.
All else being equal, which of course it is not, these three sets of numbers must be causing great angst in the Harris campaign. Further, polling shows that inflation/the economy and illegal immigration are the top concerns of voters – and Trump consistently leads when pollsters ask who can best address those issues.
Most polls are subject to a margin of error of at least +/-4% which means that any lead of four percent or less is essentially meaningless. But registration and mail-in ballot requests are not subject to a margin of error and therefore represent a far better snapshot of where the election stands.
(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is lhenry@lincolninstitute.org.)