ABC News Political Director Rick Klein warned Friday that Democrats are currently losing their edge with voting ahead of Election Day, noting Republicans are now gaining a lead with the strategy in key battleground states.
Over the course of the 2024 campaigns, Republican leaders in swing states, along with the GOP presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump, have adopted Democrats’ previous strategy of encouraging voters to get to the polls early. On “ABC News 4,” Klein noted that while pollsters may not yet know voter choices, Republicans in Nevada are outpacing Democrats’ 2020 numbers, with GOP voters currently holding a four-point lead over Democrats.
“But in Nevada, Democrats, as you can see, had a pretty big edge in early vot[ing] four years ago. That is erased and turned around right now. So what happened four years ago is in Nevada, you had Democrats basically building up a firewall before Election Day. That’s gone now. The question is, are these just Election Day voters that are instead voting early?” Klein asked.
The ABC political director continued to note that while Republican voters aren’t leading in Pennsylvania with early voting, they have narrowed the gap from four years ago, leaving the party with only a “three or four hundred thousand vote advantage overall.”
“Republicans are definitely listening to the message about voting early in a way that they didn’t four years ago,” Klein said. “Again, that was the COVID year, so things were a little off. The question that we won’t know until Election Day or after is, are these people that otherwise would be voting on Election Day instead are voting early or are these people that are voting for the first time and showing the enthusiasm of voting early?”