Harris could win these three Southern states if late deciders show up

More than a million Americans have already cast their ballots in the presidential election, but the ones who may prove decisive may not have even started paying attention.

For political junkies like me who have been following every twist and turn in this election for the last two years, the next 32 days are the most stressful as we wait to see what voters will decide.

If you already know which candidate you’re supporting in the presidential race between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — not to mention everything from governor down to local school board — it can be frustrating to wait for these seemingly indecisive, procrastinating Americans to get to it.

But late deciders are important, and this year, I think they are the reason that Harris may have a chance to win Georgia, North Carolina and Florida.

No, that’s not a typo. I said what I said. President Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020, and North Carolina has been close for a while. But Florida? The one state where the promise of a “red wave” in the 2022 midterms actually materialized? The state that has voted for Trump both times he’s been on the ballot? It’s still close enough that a late-breaking group of Harris voters could make a difference.

Now, it’s important to understand who these voters are. I think of them as intentional voters, because they’ll usually tell you what they think of the candidates and the race or that they don’t intend to vote at all. Months out from the election, if you were to ask whom they’d vote for, they’ll give a reflexive response. They’ll cite something they heard in an ad or skimmed in a news article that may or may not closely approximates which candidate they’re leaning toward. In fact, that candidate may not be whom they end up supporting.

But, as we get closer to Election Day, these voters become more engaged. Their intentions begin to shift and may even harden into support as they read up on the two candidates, listen closer to their arguments, and shift their attitudes. When they do, they can change the political landscape dramatically in short order.

That’s especially likely in the 2024 election, which has seen a lot of tumult so far.

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Why undecided voters are unsure about VP Harris October 3, 2024 / 06:24

Consider when Biden dropped out of the race and Harris became his successor. The country saw 40,000 new voter registrations in just 48 hours, according to Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey. That’s a 700% increase in the site’s daily registrations, and young voters accounted for 80% of them. According to ActBlue, the campaign and its joint fundraising committee raised more than $86 million from online donors, many of whom were donating for the first time. This averaged out to around $65 per person from more than a million people. That’s a lot of voters who were activated quite suddenly.

Or look at Taylor Swift’s influence. Her Instagram post endorsing Harris and urging her fans to vote regardless of their candidate led to at least 337,000 visits to Vote.org. That’s a large group of potential voters who were quickly activated and are not likely to be casting their ballot for Trump.

There are also signs that Trump’s own popularity has been slipping. Those signs aren’t coming from polls, but from his actual performance in the primaries as his own voters shift in their intentions since the Republican convention, as career political adviser Mike Madrid recently noted.

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Finally, there’s the potential for local issues to have a dramatic effect on turnout.

North Carolinians may turn out to rebuke Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson in the state’s gubernatorial race. Robinson recently made headlines for allegedly referring to himself as a “Black Nazi” on a porn site forum, among a litany of other disgusting comments, all of which he denies making. That’s in addition to his extremist views on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

Trump has distanced himself from Robinson but not pulled his endorsement, and it’s not clear if that would even help at this point.

Then there’s Georgia. In past elections there, we’ve seen controversial voting policies be met with determination and expanded turnout due to the resilience of Peach State voters, pushing Democrats to statewide victory in a presidential election and three Senate races. It’s possible some of the last-minute, ham-fisted changes to election rules by the state Board of Elections will also provoke a backlash.

And in Florida, voters will also be considering ballot measures to legalize recreational cannabis and codify abortion rights — popular policies that align with the Harris-Walz agenda.

To be clear, I’m not saying that Harris will outright win Georgia, North Carolina or Florida — or even that she’ll win at all. What I am saying is that the polls can’t yet capture what these late deciders intend to do. It happened in 2016 when Trump won unexpectedly, in 2020 when Biden won even as down-ballot Republicans did well, and in 2022 when a much-prophesied red wave failed to materialize. Yeah, those late voters can be pretty intentional

So, as you’re going over the polls and casting about for some kind of clue as to what may happen, remember that there’s still a lot of uncertainty. The only thing you can do is cast your own ballot, encourage your friends and family to do the same and volunteer to help out a campaign and persuade as many intentional voters as you can along the way. After that, all you can do is wait as they make their intentions known.