New Orleans      At this point in a usual election, some might say that it’s all “over but the shouting,” but in the US election the shouting has been endless and is expected to continue even after the voting is finished.  This is the time when whatever can be said, has already been said.  Now, it’s all about the ground game.  It’s GOTV, Get Out the Vote, time!

For a change, even the Upshot guy at the Times, who lives and dies on polling, concedes that it’s all about turnout.  He also notes something that is often hidden in the polls, even when they focus only on chronic voters, as opposed to registered voters in general.  He writes,

But this election seems different. As we’ve reported all cycle, Democrats excel among high-turnout voters, while Trump is strong among relatively low-turnout voters. He’s made his biggest gains among low-turnout demographic groups like young men and nonwhite voters.  In the most recent wave of New York Times/Siena College polls of key battlegrounds, Kamala Harris led collectively among voters who turned out in recent primaries or the 2022 midterms, while Trump had a 12-point lead among the 2020-but-not-2022 vote and a 19-point lead among those who didn’t vote in 2020 (but who were registered at the time; new registrants are evenly divided).

That’s very interesting, because it clearly states that whoever does best at turning out their voters could be the big winner here.  It also underlines the big challenge facing former president Trump, because he is betting on a single contractor, Turning Point, that has never been tasked with this effort in a presidential election and is untried.  Some state Republican parties have been so skeptical of Turning Point Action that they are putting resources into the kind of GOTV they have done in the past, lacking confidence that the new approach will work.

An op-ed, co-authored by progressive pollster Celinda Lake and a Republican pollster, highlights this problem.  They agree that there has never been a bigger spread, some 43%, between college-educated women and non-college educated men.  That spread favors Kamala Harris campaign, because college-educated, often suburban women are frequent, chronic, don’t miss an election from school board to president voters, and they are loving her.  The inroads that Trump has made with workers and men without college education is a serious problem for the future conception of the Democratic Party, but in this election, the cutting edge for Trump is that this group is not as dependable in actually showing up at the polls.

Gender is key here as well and a double-edged sword.  Harris to my reckoning has presented her campaign much better than Hillary Clinton, even as she says nothing about glass ceilings and being the first woman president.  She’s able to make that point more strongly by campaigning on abortion.  As many men who may not vote for Harris because she’s a woman, may be offset by women who say, what the heck, it’s past time.  I would also bet, if I were a betting man, that the crazier Trump has gotten in this campaign, the more likely women will vote for domestic security and tranquility, rather than to bring in the chaos.

Regardless, it’s all about turnout now, so we’ll see soon, who does the best at this in 2024.