Closed elections always result in voter turnout. While there are many unknowns ahead of November’s presidential election, one thing seems almost certain: it will be close, at least in many of the key states that will decide the election.
So the bipartisan polling group behind the NBC News poll, Public Opinion Strategies and Hart Research Associates, designed an experiment.
What happens in a ballot test? NBC News‘ brand–a new national survey When you adopt a voter turnout model that favors the Democratic Party over a model that favors the GOP?
The results won’t be much of a surprise. But the exercise is instructive and shows how relatively small changes in the demographic makeup of the electorate can matter in close elections.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each received 48% of the vote, according to a new October NBC News poll.
Assuming a turnout model more favorable to Republicans, Trump leads by 2 points, 49% to 47%. But one more favorable to Democrats puts Harris ahead 49% to 46%. And neither scenario requires extraordinary assumptions.
What would this more favorable Democratic activism look like? A growing number of female voters and a more racially diverse electorate have more college graduates and more urban and suburban voters.
The pattern of voter turnout that looks better for Republicans is the opposite: a whiter electorate with more men and an increase in rural voters and those without college degrees.
But what really matters is how little demographic movement it takes to create these changes. This shows how important turnout can be in elections (not to mention the importance of the assumptions polls make about who will turn out).
The difference in the share of women voters in the scenarios of democracy and pro-republican voter turnout is only 1 point. In the pro-Democrat scenario, the white share of the electorate is lower than in the pro-Republican scenario, but only by 2 points.
Differences in turnout by a few percentage points based on age, race, education, urbanicity and a host of other factors can make a big difference, especially in a race that is within the margin of error in this poll for each scenario. That’s why it’s so hard to predict what’s going to happen in a close election — and it’s one of the main reasons why there’s so much diversity in pre-election polls.
An NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters was conducted Oct. 4-8, 898 of which were reached by cellphone. Its overall margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.