Lowman S. Henry: Forget the Polls These Are the Numbers that Matter

 By Lowman S. Henry

The 2024 presidential election is rapidly becoming the most polled election in Pennsylvania history. As the most important battleground state political observers scour every poll taken in Penn’s Woods for some hint as to the status of what again is likely to be a very close battle for the commonwealth’s 19 Electoral votes.

Almost without exception, every poll has Donald Trump and Kamala Harris within the margin of error. As such, the drama that surrounds every point or half point change in the polling has made for interesting parlor speculation. But, polling is so imprecise and the race is so close that the polls are in fact meaningless in terms of discerning who is winning the horse race.

There are three other sets of numbers that carry far more significance than polling and as such should be watched far more closely than opinion polls.

One of the key predictive factors as to how a person will vote is their party registration. At one time there were over 1.1 million more registered Democrats than there were registered Republicans statewide in Pennsylvania. By the November 2020 presidential election, the Democrat voter registration advantage had shrunk to 685,818 voters.

Fast forward to September 2024 and the Democrat voter registration edge has been sliced in half since the 2020 election – down to just 338,396 voters. Tellingly, 48,618 Democrats have switched their party affiliation to Republican; two and a half times more party switches than Republicans to Democrats. 

Although Democrat registrations gained steam after the party switched out Joe Biden for Kamala Harris Republican registrations climbed even faster. Putting a cherry atop the registration sundae for Republicans Beaver County near Pittsburgh, Bucks County in the Philadelphia suburbs, and Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania flipped from blue to red. No county has flipped from red to blue. 

Democrats have dominated Republicans in mail-in balloting since the advent of no excuse mail-in voting in 2020. Here too Democrats are underperforming. As of September 23,  there are 360,101 fewer Democrat applications for a mail-in ballot than at the same time in 2020. Republican mail-in ballot requests are down by 60,963 giving the GOP almost a 300,000 voter net advantage. 

Another major change is the GOP’s approach to mail-in balloting. While the party fought and attacked mail-in voting in 2020 it is embracing the practice in 2024. In 2020 many Republicans – 141,000 – who applied for and received mail-in ballots failed to follow through and vote. It is likely some number of those voters instead went to the polls in person, but there is no doubt a large number of GOP votes were literally left lying on the table.

There are concerted efforts to ensure those votes are cast this year. Projects like the Pennsylvania Chase have deployed an army of 120 full-time paid door knockers who are fanning out across the commonwealth to make sure voters send in their ballots.

Finally, there is the impact of the Green Party. In 2020 Democrats successfully convinced the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein from the November ballot. The Green Party’s nominee for state Auditor General received 78,588 votes in the 2020 General Election while the Green Party nominee for state Treasurer received 81,984 votes.

Keep in mind Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. Making the plausible assumption that most of the Green Party presidential votes ended up in the Biden column with Stein off the ballot and that decision alone contributed significantly to the Biden victory.

All else being equal, which of course it is not, these three sets of numbers must be causing great angst in the Harris campaign. Further, polling shows that inflation/the economy and illegal immigration are the top concerns of voters – and Trump consistently leads when pollsters ask who can best address those issues.

Most polls are subject to a margin of error of at least +/-4% which means that any lead of four percent or less is essentially meaningless. But registration and mail-in ballot requests are not subject to a margin of error and therefore represent a far better snapshot of where the election stands.

(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is lhenry@lincolninstitute.org.)