Candidates try to predict trends as nearly 70 million Americans voted early | US elections 2024

Nearly 70 million Americans have already voted in the historic US election that culminates on Tuesday, sparking fierce debate about what the early voting trend could mean as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris prepare for their final showdown.

With both candidates and their top surrogates crisscrossing the country in a heated last-minute campaign, the race remains all but dead — both in the head-to-head national polls and in the crucial seven battleground states that will actually decide this Race for the White House.

But while Trump and Harris made their pitches to what is now a tiny number of undecided voters, tens of millions of Americans have already cast their votes in the election, taking advantage of the various procedures in the United States that allow early voting.

With so much at stake in the election, this large number has sparked intense speculation about what it could mean, as both Republicans and Democrats try to gather information that shows their side may already have the advantage if election day is approaching.

Harris' campaign is drawing on some key information from the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. The vast state – stretching from New Jersey in the east to Ohio in the west – is part of the “Rust Belt” dominated by former industrial cities and considered likely the most important region in the election.

Almost all of the most likely paths to victory for both candidates involve winning the Rust Belt states, with Pennsylvania the biggest prize.

In this state, voters over 65 have cast nearly half of early ballots, and registered Democrats account for about 58% of votes cast by seniors, compared to 35% for Republicans. That's a big lead in a demographic that typically leans toward Trump.

At the same time, women trail men by 10 points in early voting in Pennsylvania, according to an analysis by the website Politico using data from the University of Florida's United States Election Project. Another analysis by NBC found an even larger gap in favor of women in the state at 13 points.

Harris and her team are hoping for a large turnout from women in the election, as they have made the loss of reproductive rights a focus of their campaign after the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to abortion. Women leaned heavily Democratic in the election while men leaned Republican, and so any signs of strong female turnout may be good news for the vice president.

“The gender gap is a major cause for hope among Democrats and concern for Republicans, especially with many states having abortion rights changes on their ballots in the 2024 elections,” Thomas Miller, a data scientist at Northwestern University, told Newsweek.

But Republicans also see signs of hope in the early voting trends – a sign that America's divisive election is still proving unpredictable, even after nearly two years of fierce campaigning by both parties.

In Arizona, a crucial swing state in the so-called “Sun Belt” of electoral colleges, more and more male voters are turning out – a sign that Republicans' strategies of putting men who have never voted before could be working . In Arizona, the number of new voters last week was 86,000 — far more than the tiny margin by which Joe Biden beat Trump in the state in 2020 — and the largest share of those new voters were male Republicans.

Overall, Republicans have traditionally been outnumbered in early voting as more Democrats opted to vote. That's partly because Trump and some of his allies have criticized early voting with baseless allegations of fraud and conspiracy, even as pro-Republican activists urged their supporters to go to the polls before Election Day.

In 2024, there are signs that Republicans will actually vote early in large numbers.

There are strong signs of significant early Republican turnout in Georgia – another key battleground in the Sun Belt's Deep South. According to Georgia Votes, more than 700,000 people who already voted in 2024 did not vote at all in 2020, seen as a sign that many of them may be Republicans as the campaign has focused on that demographic. At the same time, the three highest voter turnout counties in Georgia are rural areas that Trump easily won in 2020.

“We have a lot of voters who voted in 2016 but didn't vote in 2020… What makes me think they are Trump voters is that most of them… come from parts of the state that are pretty strong Republican strongholds .” Georgia Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones told Fox News.

Of course, as voting patterns change on both sides, it could also be that any advantage of early voting for Democrats or Republicans is quickly wiped out on Election Day itself, when tens of millions of voters go to the polls in person.

In the end, the 2024 race remains completely unpredictable. The Guardian's 10-day poll average tracker has shown little change over the past week. After a slight decline in support for Harris in October, Harris maintains a one-point lead in national polls of 48% versus 47% for Trump, virtually identical to last week and well within the margin of error of most polls.

Even in the contested states there is still a dead heat. In Pennsylvania, the candidates are tied at 48%, while Harris is only one point ahead in the other two Rust Belt states, Michigan and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Trump is slightly ahead in the Sun Belt, where he is ahead by 1% in North Carolina, by 2% in Georgia and Arizona, and by less than a percentage point in Nevada.

A wild card for both campaigns, however, is the Muslim electorate angered by U.S. support for Israel in its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. A poll released Friday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that 42% of the country's 2.5 million Muslim voters favor Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, while 41% prefer Harris. Trump recorded 10% support.

In theory, these support margins for Stein, like in 2016, could swing some key swing states like Michigan toward Trump if the contest there is very close.