What early voting has told us so far about how the 2024 election will turn out

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris make their final pitches to voters ahead of Election Day, ballots are already pouring in as early voting continues. Encouraging signs for Harris in Michigan In Detroit, the city clerk predicts between 53 and 55 percent of registered voters will take part in the 2024 race once early and Election Day votes are fully counted, surpassing 2016 and 2020 levels, a positive sign for Democrats, who are hoping the state’s urban centers turn out for Harris. That led one columnist in the Las Vegas Review-Journal to declare that the “Reid Machine” of Democratic influence, established by longtime Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “may be dead.” A ‘silver surge’ for the Dems in Pennsylvania A reversal in the opposite direction seems to be underway in Pennsylvania, where registered Democrats accounted for about 58 percent of the senior vote, a key constituency for Republicans, who only have about 35 percent over the 65+ crowd so far. “Our expectation going into the early vote was that it would, in general, skew substantially more Republican than in 2020,” Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of the data firm TargetSmart, told Politico of this “silver surge.” It’s all the more surprising given that Republicans are starting to abandon their open hostility toward early voting.