Florida Could Seal Trump’s Fate on Election Night

In 2016, Trump carried Florida by crushing Hillary Clinton among voters ages 65 and older, who, exit polls showed, supported him by a 17-point margin. But seniors are a group that’s moved away from Trump during his presidency, and even more so with the onset of Covid-19. Early returns in senior-heavy Florida suggest they may vote in historic numbers. That would seem to be bad news for Trump, whose support among seniors in a recent Quinnipiac University poll has cratered. The Oct. 7 poll shows Biden winning seniors by 15 points (55% to 40%), up from a 3-point lead in early September.

A senior surge in Florida that mirrors Quinnipiac’s support level for Biden would probably mean that the nightmare scenario of a drawn-out, contested election won’t happen and Trump’s fate could be apparent on election night. Unlike some other states that don’t start counting mail-in ballots until polls close, Florida counts them as they come in. That means the “red mirage” and “blue shift” that Democrats fear—a scenario where in-person votes put Trump in the lead on election night, but a late surge of mail-in ballots then gives Biden the edge, leading to a protracted legal battle—is unlikely if Biden’s lead in Florida is decisive and the state can be called on Nov. 3. (Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, pledged last month to spend $100 million in Florida to help Biden’s election efforts.)

TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, is collecting and organizing early and absentee vote returns in a handy tool that gives a real-time glimpse of how this scenario is developing. As of Monday morning, Florida voters had cast more than 1.6 million mail-in votes in the 2020 general election—nearly 18% of all the votes statewide in 2016. (Early in-person voting doesn’t begin in Florida until Oct. 19.) Seniors account for a staggering 56.9% of votes cast so far, up from 39.5% at this same point four years ago:

The early vote this cycle also tilts much more Democratic than the 2016 results at the same period. At this point in 2016, Democrats led in early voting, but only narrowly. This year, the Democrats’ margin over Republicans is so large—22 points—that even if you added the entire population of unaffiliated early voters to the Republican column, they’d still trail Democrats:

However, as Democrats learned painfully in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost Florida, an early vote lead isn’t determinative of the final outcome. “The lesson from ’16 on early votes is that if we’re just looking at early votes and saying ‘Dems are winning,’ that was wrong—it wasn’t indicative of a large Democratic enthusiasm advantage,” says Tom Bonier, CEO of TargetSmart.

That’s especially true this year, when a deadly virus that preys on older, sicker people is tearing through the country. It makes plenty of sense that seniors would mail in their ballots early, rather than vote in person on Election Day, giving rise to the possibility that the early surge reflects people shifting the timing of their vote, rather than a movement toward Biden and Democrats.

Certainly, that’s part of what’s going on. But it’s not the only thing happening. There was also a senior surge in 2018—well before Covid—when voters 65 and older ended up casting nearly as many ballots in the midterm elections (35.4 million) as they did in the 2016 presidential election (36 million). That election went terribly for Republicans, with Democrats netting 41 House seats.

What’s more, Bonier points to additional data from this cycle that suggests regular voters getting their ballots in early doesn’t fully account for the early surge. In Florida, as of Oct. 12, the number of “infrequent” senior voters (93,000) is higher than any other group, even though the share of young voters (not a Trump-friendly contingent) has increased more:

More broadly, the number of voters of all ages who have never before cast a ballot—a group Democrats were winning by 6.8 points at this time in 2016—now tilts to Democrats by 14 points:

With polls since 2016 showing a pronounced senior swing from Trump to Biden, the flood of early votes—especially from non-regular voters—is a worrisome sign for Trump. While it doesn’t guarantee anything, as Democrats learned in 2016, it’s certainly not a positive indicator of a second term for the president. It’s probably why a Covid-stricken Trump, captive in the White House as he recuperated last week, felt compelled to shoot a video aimed at reassuring seniors.

“We think of seniors as a very high-turnout group, so we don’t ordinarily think of them as turnout targets,” says Bonier. “But there are plenty of seniors who have never voted before and are voting for the first time. We see that in the data, and we see it in Florida for sure.”

If the surge of senior voters, new and old, keeps up across the next three weeks, Trump’s hope of winning Florida—and reelection—could rapidly vanish on Nov. 3.

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