Why Trump is polling better in Georgia than North Carolina: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the policy deskevening bulletin that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill from the NBC News Politics team.

In today’s edition, a national political reporter examines Donald Trump’s electoral standing in two key southern battlegrounds. What’s more, national political reporter Ben Kamisar reports an increase in the number of voters planning to vote early.

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Why is Trump polling better in Georgia than in North Carolina?

By Steve Kornacki

The latest round New York Times/Siena College state polls It’s a continuation of what has become a pattern: Donald Trump is doing slightly better in Georgia than in North Carolina.

In Times/Siena polls, Trump leads Kamala Harris by 4 points among likely voters in Georgia, and Joe Biden by 0.3 points in 2020. And Trump is 2 points ahead in North Carolina, where he has a 1.3-point lead. four years ago. (Both results are within the margin of error.) Other surveys have found similar results. a few aggregators. And the Democrats now pushes for the switch Trump has turned to scandal-plagued GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, hoping to damage his reputation in North Carolina.

The findings may seem intuitive. While the two battleground states are demographically similar, it is Georgia where Democrats have made more significant strides under Trump. From 2016 to the 2020 election, the Peach State has moved away from the GOP by 5.4 points. In North Carolina, the change was 2.3 points.

This difference seems quite logical. African Americans make up a higher share of Georgia voters, and the fast-growing and increasingly Democratic Atlanta metro area has a larger share of the state vote than North Carolina’s two largest metro areas (Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham). These are key components of Democratic success.

Still — at least in the polls — it’s Georgia, not North Carolina, where Trump is faring better. So what happens?

Obviously, since we are not talking about large differences in survey results, statistical noise and random sampling error can play a role. And it may be that the polls are right, and Trump really did make recent gains in Georgia that he didn’t compare to in North Carolina.

An interesting possibility involves a version of the voting errors we have seen most dramatically in the northern battleground in the last two presidential elections. In 2016 and 2020, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted the most. Those states are full of key Trump demographics — white voters without a four-year college degree — and for a variety of potential reasons, polls haven’t given Trump full support.

Similar demographic elections are likely to be repeated this time as well. Now, take a look at the share of the adult population in each of the major battlegrounds for white residents without a four-year degree:

As you can see, North Carolina has the highest concentration of non-college white residents out of the three northern states, 7 points higher than Georgia, which has the lowest concentration. According to exit polls, Trump won the white non-college vote in every state in 2020 by about the same margin: 59 points in Georgia and 57 points in North Carolina.

So if a similar gaffe were to happen again, it could mean that Trump is missing the full extent of Tar Heel State support even more than Georgia.

In fact, we may have seen it happen in 2020. According to the then-latest FiveThirtyEight average, Trump lost 1.8 points in North Carolinabut won the state by 1.3 points – missing the vote by 3.1 points. In contrast, FiveThirtyEight’s final average Trump lost 1.2 points in Georgiathen it lost 0.3 points – a total of 0.9 points.

Of course, for all we know, polls this time may not have the same problem when it comes to white voters without a college degree. In that regard, they may have an entirely different demographic blind spot that only appears on Election Night. But since this has happened twice before, it’s worth considering that if the problem persists, it could have ramifications not only on the northern battlefields, but also in the Sun Belt.

Half of voters plan to vote early, with major partisan splits

By Ben Kamisar

Half of registered voters plan to vote early this fall, new September figures show NBC News survey Democrats are gaining ground among early voters and Republicans are showing stronger support among those who plan to vote in person on Election Day.

Fifty-one percent of voters say they will vote early either by mail or in person, with Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 61 percent to 35 percent (a 26-point margin) among those voters.

By comparison, Trump is ahead by 20 points, 57%-37%, among voters who plan to vote on Election Day, which is 45% of voters in the poll. That’s a smaller lead among a slightly smaller portion of voters than Harris had in these early voters.

“It should be closed between either margin [those] early voting, or on Election Day Republican margins have to be bigger than that to win,” said Republican Bill McInturff, who conducted the NBC News poll with Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.

The massive political divergence of early and Election Day voters is the latest evidence of dramatic and lasting change in the Trump years.

In recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls from 2012 and 2016, majorities said they plan to vote on Election Day, rather than early.

Polls showed Democrats led early voters in both election cycles (then-President Barack Obama led by 8 points in 2012 and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 14 points in 2016), with Election Day voting virtually tied in both cases. .

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That’s all for the Policy Desk for now. If you have feedback – like it or not – send us an email politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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