(DCNF)—Journalist Mark Halperin said Tuesday that former President Donald Trump will secure victory on Nov. 5 if early voting trends hold.
While Democrats maintain a significant lead in early voter turnout, Republicans have cut the gap compared to 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Halperin, on his 2WAY platform, said all the analysts he has spoken to since Monday believe Trump will win if this trend continues, as Democrats will be unable to combat Republicans’ early vote gains on Election Day.
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“If the early vote numbers stay the way they are, and that’s a big if, we’ll almost certainly know before Election Day who’s going to win the election … Make no mistake, if these numbers hold up in the states where we can understand even partially what the data is like, we’ll know that Donald Trump’s going to be president on Election Day … It’s extraordinarily important, and we got to track that day to day,” Halperin said. “That’s more important than the polls right now. It’s more important than almost anything because it’s giving us insight into a variety of factors that are accounting for a Republican overperformance by various metrics in the early voting in the battleground states.”
The journalist later quoted a blog post by The Nevada Independent CEO and editor Jon Ralston published Monday evening.
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“The Clark firewall, that’s Clark County where Las Vegas is, where the vast majority of the state’s population is, has all but collapsed. The Democrats usually have a huge lead there, 4,500 votes. The rurals are overperforming their share of the electorate,” Halperin said. “And [Ralston] says … ‘It’s too soon to call it a trend, but this was a huge day for Republicans in Nevada (they are ahead in Washoe now, too, erasing a deficit). A few more days like this, though, and the Democratic bedwetting will reach epic proportions.’”
“As we said yesterday, don’t overread the early vote, okay? It can change. We don’t know exactly who’s casting these ballots, how they’re voting, etc.,” Halperin added. “But every analyst I’ve talked to in the last 24 hours, including people who speak publicly, say if this continues, Donald Trump can’t lose because the Democrats can’t possibly do well enough on Election Day.”
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten asserted Monday that Trump will probably gain ground against Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Day, despite her potential early voting lead.
“We’re expecting that Election Day vote to be very good for Donald Trump. And the average polling, we see him up by 17 [points],” Enten said.
“Even if Harris leads in that early count because of this mail vote, Donald Trump is very likely going to close the gap pretty quickly on Election Day,” he added.
Trump currently holds leads over Harris in all of the top battleground states, according to RealClearPolling averages.