Campaigns are flying blind in projecting who will actually vote in a pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic is forcing political campaigns to brace for an unprecedented challenge: How to forecast who will vote in an election set during the most frightening health crisis in a century.
Political strategists from both parties who were almost certainly counting on record turnout for the November elections say the lingering threat of COVID-19 — or the potential of it resurfacing — could significantly remake the voter pool in unpredictable ways.
Between the possibilities of wholesale changes to how elections are run, disruptive court rulings and voters’ fear for their own safety — all of which were on display in this week’s Wisconsin elections — pollsters for campaigns up and down the ballot fear they will be flying blind for the next seven months before Election Day.
“Imagine if you had a national or statewide earthquake. That’s the potential impact on voting that no pollster in modern times has ever had to deal with,” said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic pollster. “Imagine right now Michigan being a hot spot. How many people are going to go out to vote? Who’s less likely or more likely? That’s the part that’s going to be really difficult. It’s going to require a lot of nuance and intricate polling that hasn’t been done in the past.”
Projecting which voters will show up to vote and determining which messages to target them with are tricky endeavors for strategists even under ideal circumstances. But for campaigns that have already had to rethink their organization from top to bottom since the outbreak, few tasks will be as important in the coming months.
Already, officials from both parties saw what amounts to a likely worst-case scenario for modeling voter turnout this week, when Wisconsin held elections for a state Supreme Court seat and other local offices near the peak of the pandemic’s first wave, and just a day after last-minute court rulings overturned the governor’s efforts to postpone the election and relax absentee voting restrictions.
Operatives are closely monitoring the turnout numbers in the general election battleground state for clues about November. Final results won’t be reported until next Monday, but according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, just over 1 million of the nearly 1.3 million absentee ballots that had been sent out were returned as of Wednesday morning. Roughly 13,000 absentee ballots that were requested did not get sent out in time. Meanwhile, some voters, particularly in the Democratic hub of Milwaukee, dealt with long lines to cast ballots in person.
In a best-case scenario, the coronavirus will be largely stamped out by this summer, traditional campaigning will resume, and voters will have the confidence from public health officials that they can cast ballots without much risk. As it currently stands, a majority of American voters said they would feel comfortable going to a polling place, according to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center.
At any rate, a growing call, mostly from Democrats, to expand mail-in voting and online registration virtually guarantees that a series of state-by-state battles over the rules guiding the election will be waged over the coming months.
“I think we’re going to see a lot of special sessions in legislatures this summer,” said Republican pollster Brent Buchanan. “The secretaries of states are going to find ways for people to participate by mail. There’s going to be a huge outcry for it.”
Republicans complain that vote-by-mail programs will lead to potential fraud and ballot harvesting, when a designated group collects ballots to be submitted in bulk. Meanwhile, some Democrats fear an all-mail election could complicate participation for some of their most important constituencies.
“If you’re in a mail-in only state, I’m worried about young people, people of color. Groups like that may be disenfranchised by a mail-in only,” said John Anzalone, a veteran Democratic pollster working on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
Regardless of which party the changes hurt, pollsters say they will deeply affect campaign strategy. In states that expand voting by mail, for example, campaigns would need to track which voters are more likely to use it as an option and make sure they have the right information to use the new system.
And in many instances, voters will cast ballots by mail days or weeks before the election date, meaning campaigns need to adjust how and when to push their messages to make sure they stay timely.
“I can imagine a more extensive survey figuring out who those voters are, how they’re going to vote, and what information we can give them to vote,” said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, who added that she expected to include in her polls questions about what barriers voters worry will hinder their participation. “Normally we wouldn’t do that.”
Greenberg noted that surveys and focus groups are still continuing even amid nationwide social distancing, with call center employees conducting interviews from their homes while focus groups move online.
But even with those tools still at their disposal, many pollsters are blunt in their admission that projections will be more difficult than ever before. If turnout declines, for instance, will it decline evenly or will some groups be more likely to stay home than others? Or would a demographic group like senior citizens be even less likely to participate because of a greater health risk?
Or, as one pollster suggested, would turnout actually increase?
“You could also see a world in which people are going to be very motivated,” said Nick Gourevtich, a Democratic pollster. “Like, this is the one thing they are going to do come hell or high water.”
The presidential candidates are still formulating their thoughts on the best way forward. Trump has called mail-in voting “horrible,” “corrupt” and on Wednesday tweeted “doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” Meanwhile, Biden said he’d prefer to keep in-person voting while also exploring vote-by-mail options.
But while politicians will squabble over the mechanics of the election, one factor that is largely beyond their control is the vitality of the virus.
“Everybody’s making day-to-day decisions that in 24 hours could change, and then in another 24 hours could change again,” said Mark Putnam, a veteran Democratic admaker working with a pro-Biden super PAC.
Want to chat about the 2020 Election?
Sign up to text our national politics correspondent, Dave Catanese, on everything Elections 2020 related. Receive texts with Dave's thoughts, images and musings from the Campaign Trail and text him back directly.
Join NowThis story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 9:48 AM.
