October 30th 2024.
Billionaire tech mogul, Elon Musk, has been making headlines this week with his political predictions. He believes that based on early voting data, former president Donald Trump is on track for a sweeping victory in Pennsylvania, and that Vice President Kamala Harris should be worried about losing Virginia.
Musk's analysis is based on publicly available data on pre-election voting, which will not be counted until Election Day. However, voting experts caution that this method is not statistically sound and could lead to confusion and doubt when the ballots are finally tallied.
David Becker, an expert on voting procedures, who runs a non-partisan center for Election Innovation and Research, says that the race is expected to be extremely close. He also emphasizes that it wouldn't be surprising if either candidate emerges as the winner.
This is not a phenomenon unique to Musk. Partisans from both sides often use early voting data to promote their candidates and boost turnout, even though the numbers may not accurately reflect the actual voting intentions.
Social media platforms are flooded with predictions from Democratic consultants, right-wing pundits, journalists, and self-proclaimed voting experts. Musk, who is currently the richest man in the world, has previously endorsed Trump and has donated $118 million to his own pro-Trump super PAC. He is also known for spreading false and misleading information about elections.
Experts are concerned that Musk's grandiose predictions of a "crushing" victory for Trump in Pennsylvania and other states could influence his loyal followers to question the legitimacy of the results if Trump ends up losing. Other pro-Trump figures and outlets have also been pushing similar narratives about the inevitability of a Trump victory.
Like many political observers, Musk has also noticed the strong Republican turnout in early voting in key states like North Carolina and Nevada. However, he has gone further by making mathematically unsupported claims about Trump's potential blowout victories in swing states and even in traditionally blue states like New Jersey and Virginia.
It's important to note that early voting data only represents a fraction of the total number of voters. It also does not provide information about who these early voters are supporting. At best, it can offer a glimpse into their party registration, age, and race.
Becker stresses that early voting numbers do not tell us anything about who is winning and that people should be cautious about claims of one candidate pulling ahead. He also points out that we don't know if these early voters are new to the process or if they would have voted on Election Day anyway.
A spokesperson for Musk's super PAC declined to comment on his predictions. While Musk posted his predictions on his X platform, Trump has been sowing baseless fears of widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania. He used a real incident of potential voter registration fraud to falsely claim that thousands of "fake ballots" were being cast.
Musk's specific prediction that Trump will win Pennsylvania in a landslide is based on a comparison of the current 2024 vote-by-mail turnout to the numbers from the 2020 race. His post on X has been viewed over 54 million times as of Wednesday morning.
It is true that the Republican turnout in Pennsylvania is not as far behind the Democrats as it was in 2020. However, experts warn against making bold predictions based on this single data point.
Data from Catalist, a company that provides data and analytics to Democrats, academics, and non-profit groups, shows that registered Republicans account for about 32% of the early vote in Pennsylvania so far, up from 21% at this point in 2020. Democrats, on the other hand, made up 68% of the pre-election vote at this point in 2020, compared to 58% this year.
A similar trend can be seen in other states as well. In North Carolina, Republicans make up about 34% of the pre-election vote, up by almost 4 percentage points from 2020. In Arizona, Republicans account for 42% of the vote, up by over 5 percentage points from this time in 2020.
Veteran GOP election lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, says that Musk's claims are nothing more than the boastful words of a partisan who wants to take credit for an outcome that is still unknown. He also stresses that this kind of irresponsible behavior from both sides can feed into the post-election distrust in the results.
During the 2020 campaign, which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump attacked mail-in voting almost every day. However, this time around, he and the Republican National Committee have been encouraging their supporters to vote by mail, even as Trump continues to question the integrity of the overall system.
It is also important to remember that a large number of voters are not affiliated with either party, and it's impossible to predict how they will vote. Not all registered Republicans will support Trump, and not all registered Democrats will vote for Harris.
Isaac Saul, who writes a non-partisan political newsletter, tweeted that Musk either doesn't understand or is choosing to ignore the fact that the early voting data only represents a small portion of the total votes. He also believes that this kind of commentary should be taken with a grain of salt.
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