Donald Trump Gets Bad News From Two Early Voting Trends in Pennsylvania

Early Pennsylvania voting data has highlighted two potentially worrying trends for Donald Trump’s hopes of beating Vice President Kamala Harris in the crucial battleground state, according to analysis.
The former president is faced with a couple of potential warning signs as data from Pennsylvania shows more women have voted early than men in the 2024 election, and registered Democrats aged over 65 have so far also outvoted Republicans of the same age group, Politico reported this week.
It is unclear who these Pennsylvanians voted for, but seniors in the state have generally been a reliably Republican constituency and the Harris campaign has made it a priority to appeal to women, through issues like abortion. Republicans do tend to cast their votes more on Election Day, rather than with mail-in or early voting.
Harris’ clearest path to victory in November would be to win the three blue-wall battleground states of Pennsylvania, with its 19 Electoral College votes, Michigan and Wisconsin, barring any shock results elsewhere. Trump’s most efficient route to 270 electoral votes would involve winning Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.
Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaign teams for comment via email.
Registered Democrats account for about 58 percent of votes cast by seniors, compared to 35 percent for Republicans, Politico reported on Thursday. The over-65s have cast nearly half of the early ballots so far.
The over-65s historically vote in higher numbers during elections than any other age group.
Trump won more support from the over-65s in both the 2020 and 2016 elections nationally. The former president got around 53 percent of the senior vote in Pennsylvania at the 2020 election while still losing the state to Joe Biden.
Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of the data firm TargetSmart, said he is surprised by what he is calling the “silver surge” in early voting from senior Democrats.
“Our expectation going into the early vote was that it would, in general, skew substantially more Republican than in 2020,” Bonier told Politico. “There is no more pandemic, Democrats were more Covid conscious…and Republicans have been pushing early voting.”
The early voting figures suggesting Harris is leading among the over-65s is also backed by recent polling.
A Fox News survey conducted from October 24 to 28 of 1,310 registered Pennsylvania voters showed that Harris has a 5-point lead over Trump among over-65s (51 percent to 46). The margin of error was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
A CNN/SRSS poll of 819 likely Pennsylvania voters, carried out between October 23 and 28, had Harris with a 2-point lead over Trump among the over-65s (49 percent to 47).
Pennsylvania Trump campaign spokesperson Kush Desai told Politico: “Americans of all ages and backgrounds are unifying behind President Trump’s agenda to Make America Safe, Strong, Wealthy, and Great Again, and this reality is playing out in record Republican voter registrations and turnout across battleground states, including Pennsylvania.”
Politico also reported on Tuesday that women are outpacing men in early voting in another potential warning sign for Trump.
Harris, who has made protecting abortion and reproductive rights one of her key campaign pledges, will be looking for strong female support to help her beat Trump in November.
There is at least a 10-point gap in favor women in the early vote in the Pennsylvania, according to Politico’s analysis, which uses data from the University of Florida’s United States Election Project
Women registered as Democrats in Pennsylvania also make up nearly a third of early votes from people who did not vote in the 2020 election.
NBC News’ tracker of early ballot returns suggested Pennsylvania has a bigger gender gap, with women accounting for 56 percent of the early vote compared to about 43 percent for men.
“The gender gap is a key reason for hope among Democrats and concern among Republicans, especially when many states have abortion rights amendments on their ballots in the 2024 election,” Thomas Miller, a data scientist at Northwestern University, told Newsweek on Thursday.
Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who tracks early voting data for the United States Election Project, said that an increase in women voters in this year’s election may not necessarily be beneficial for Harris.
“We are seeing an increase in Republicans of all types, gender—men and women—voting. It’s just that women are still ahead and keeping pace,” McDonald told Politico.
Trump won a slightly larger share of women’s votes in 2020 than in 2016 (44 percent from 39), according to Pew Research analysis.