ICYMI on Monday
Pay no attention to disinfo about a red wave, Susie Madrak advises:
Dem strategist Simon Rosenberg breaks it all down. He says that Republicans have been flooding the news with marginal polls, and the media consumes them without question. And of course, those polls will feed the narrative that the election was stolen, because “Look at the numbers!”
“Hello media friends, You’ve been played by the GOP,” tweets Rosenburg.
Bob Kutner adds at The American Prospect:
As of October 30, Democratic early voting for 2022 was exceeding early voting in the Democratic wave election of 2018, while Republican early voting was lagging it.
Now, early voting is so much easier than in 2018 in most of the country, and the pandemic upended so many voting habits, that it’s hard to extrapolate very much from those statistics. But [Democratic pollster Anna] Greenberg says her polls and other proprietary polls suggest that women intend to vote in large numbers next week. In the five states that report early voting by gender (Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and North Carolina), 54.4 percent of the early voters have been women, while 44.3 percent have been men.
Tom Bonier of TargetSmart, who has been vocal about women’s turnout since Dobbs, points out that women’s requests for vote-by-mail ballots have far exceed those by men, and that the statistics probably understate the energy of younger women.
There was a huge surge in women’s registration after the Dobbs decision. And Greenberg adds this subtle insight: “From what I’ve seen from my polls,” she says, “it isn’t that the impact of Dobbs has faded. It’s that there are diminishing returns.” By that, Greenberg means that women who have been motivated to vote because of abortion rights are already pretty locked in. Other voters, such as college-educated men (who tend to be anti-MAGA but not primarily moved by reproductive rights) need to be motivated to turn out based on other issues.
Lately, two-thirds or so of our final vote in North Carolina is cast by Election Day. But I warn first-time candidates that they cannot bank on early vote leads. Republicans bat last. This year, if you have not heard, the GOP is advising their voters to vote in person on Election Day and to hold their absentee ballots ballots until Nov. 8 (Associated Press):
The plan is based on unfounded conspiracy theories that fraudsters will manipulate voting systems to rig results for Democrats once they have seen how many Republican votes have been returned early. There has been no evidence of any such widespread fraud.
If enough voters are dissuaded from casting ballots early, it could lead to long lines on Election Day and would push back processing of those late-arriving mailed ballots. Those ballots likely would not get counted until the next day or later.
Donald Trump recently recommended voting on Election Day, saying, “it’s much harder for them to cheat that way.” If Republicans vote as late as possible on Election Day, those wiley, communist Democrats won’t know how many ballots they need to stuff, dontcha know?
So, MAGA Republicans are ignoring the advice of GOP leaders about getting in their votes early.
The strategy push by conservatives comes after the use of mailed ballots soared during the 2020 election amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The end of pandemic restrictions, Trump’s attacks on mailed ballots and new voting restrictions in some Republican-led states has led to a decline in the use of mailed ballots this year, but it still remains a popular option for many voters.
Experts say a last-minute crush of ballots could end up creating delays that can be used by a bad actor to undermine confidence in the election.
“It’s an opening for people to begin questioning and stoking mistrust and distrust,” said Chris Piper, former commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections.
That’s MAGA Republicans’ plan.
How often do battleground states see cold temperatures, rain, or snow on Election Day? Wisconsin and Michigan have already seen snow. And northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. But you do you, GOP.