And what is the sort of composite when you average them together? Harris with a three-point advantage nationally over Donald Trump. Now, if you're a Republican, what you can take salads from here is this is not unfamiliar territory for Donald Trump. Take a look here at the last two elections, 2020, 2016, the polling at this point coming out of Labor Day, beginning the fall rush. In 2016, Hillary Clinton led on average by five points. Of course, Donald Trump won in 2016.
And Joe Biden had an even bigger lead on average Labor Day 2020. Donald Trump didn't win that election. But certainly in the Electoral College, he came this close to doing so on. So Trump has run from behind before, certainly.
Right. And he looks like he's going to do it again. Plus, he under polls, people say. And I don't think that now is any different. Harris seems to be more popular suddenly than Joe Biden, even though throughout her vice presidency, she's always polled lower, which is why there was a push for other Democrats to push her out and maybe sell Joe Biden as somebody.
They could do it for two years. We've got this talented person behind him. But now everything's reversed because I believe the media has gotten firmly behind her. Eighty four percent of all her stories are positive. Eighty seven percent of all Trump stories are negative.
How could that not play a role? Well, joining us now to talk about this and more is Tom Bonior. He's the CEO of Target Smart. So, Tom, what is Target Smart? Target Smart is a data company, a political data company at our center. We work with with campaigns and organizations.
Really, what we do is we build individual level voter data, build models and use that to help campaigns drive their strategy. Gotcha. So right now, are you affiliated with either campaign? So we work primarily with Democratic campaigns. Gotcha. All right. So what could you tell me about trends right now in the battleground states?
What, first off, should we look for at this point? It's registration, not likely, correct? That's right. I mean, generally what we're looking at, you mentioned the polls and obviously we're all obsessed with the polls.
I'm right there with everyone. But we also have to keep in mind, as you said, there's not a great track record of accuracy with the polls. I mean, back in 2022, we were told afterwards that the polls were actually quite good when they missed by about five points. And we know this race is a much closer race than that would suggest. So what we look at is other trends. We look at voter registration data.
We're looking at what people are actually doing, the actions they're taking. And so at this point, the big question that we've been looking at is how did this race change when Joe Biden stepped out and Vice President Harris stepped in? You know, are people responding with any level of excitement, enthusiasm? We do know that Democrats were struggling this year and really over the earlier part of this cycle with a lack of excitement, enthusiasm. And we saw much more excitement and enthusiasm on the Republican side. What we've seen since then is just this big increase in traditionally Democratic groups registering to vote since July 21st, when that switchover happened. A lot of younger voters who were frankly not very excited about this presidential race a month ago are registering to vote. A lot of younger women and especially a lot of younger black and Latino women registering to vote.
And this is, by the way, you mentioned the battlegrounds. It's happening in the battlegrounds that we've looked at so far. States like Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada. But it's also happening in red states, blue states. It's kind of happening all over.
It's more of an organic movement that seems to be happening at this moment. Mostly you say women and black women in particular. Yeah, especially younger black women, younger Hispanic women just registering at rates higher than we have seen, including what we saw two years ago after the Dobbs decision, where we did see, again, at that point, a lot of more organic intensity and enthusiasm where you had a lot of these same groups registering to vote at a high rate, presumably in reaction to that Supreme Court decision. We're seeing numbers at this point that are actually exceeding those registration numbers from two years ago.
So you break it down. And so let's look at you said overall up 175 percent black women voting in 13 states. So in North Carolina in particular, what did you find? Yeah, North Carolina, it's one of those states where the electorate, you know, it's a pretty diverse electorate, significant African-American population. It's also a relatively young state in terms of those those demographics. And what you're seeing is similar to those national numbers you cited, meaning you're seeing almost a tripling. When we look at younger black women registration, meaning we're saying in this case under the age of 30, we're seeing almost tripling in registration rates compared to the same point in time four years ago. That's an important baseline here, given that, you know, we don't want to compare it to something that's outside of the presidential cycle. When we look at that same week prior to the 2020 election, what you're seeing is almost triple the number of young black women registering to vote, also young voters overall.
It's a little bit over doubling from that previous week from 2020. So, again, similar to the numbers we're seeing across that entire sample, we're seeing in North Carolina. But you see rural votes going more for Republicans, you said.
Absolutely. You know, winning bigger, but obviously rural means less in the dense areas. I know a lot of people from the Northeast seem to be relocating to North Carolina.
So let's go to Pennsylvania. You write voter registration among Republicans is four times higher than it is among Democrats. GOP voter registration surged in July with more than 21,000 Republicans. In contrast, only 5000 Democrats.
So what do those numbers mean to you? Yeah, well, Pennsylvania is a state where you look at the last. This is a trend that's been more than just the last few months. It's frankly been the last few years where you've seen historically Democrats built up a pretty substantial registration advantage in the state going back decades. And really, over the last few years, Republicans have been chipping into those gains by registering more voters. And that's been a fairly consistent trend.
You know, part of that is a little misleading. What we're seeing is younger voters are more likely to register as independents or unaffiliated voters, but it doesn't seem to impact how they're voting. They're still voting pretty heavily Democratic. But it's still, you know, certainly a trend that I think has been concerning for a lot of Democrats, given how important Pennsylvania is to both campaigns. Yeah, you write also the number of Democrats registered to vote in the state has decreased by more than 320,000. When people talk about cleaning up the register, their registration, has Pennsylvania done a good job on that?
Has North Carolina done a good job on that? Yeah, I mean, both those states have done a pretty good job. You know, there are some states that I think are a little bit overzealous when they talk about cleaning up the registration rolls. Sometimes if someone has just gone two years without voting, they can be purged from the rolls.
You know, both of those states have done a pretty good job. You know, and those numbers that you're citing, there's sort of a few things that are happening. Part of that is people who are being removed from the rolls because they no longer live in the state or they've died. In some cases, it's people switching parties. You know, in Pennsylvania, you've had it both ways, people switching from Dem to Republican and vice versa, but you have had more people switching from Democrat to Republican than the opposite. You know, especially when we think about Western Pennsylvania, some of these areas that were traditionally more solidly Democratic that have trended much more Republican in the last decade or so, or certainly since Trump's first election. We have Walt and Kamala Harris in Florida.
Maybe they think suddenly they feel it might be in play. You said Florida has one million more Republicans registered to vote. That wasn't the case a few years ago. 5.3 million active Republican voters in the state compared to 4.3 active Democrats. Why do you think the Democrats might see a glimmer of hope there? Well, you know, I think part of this has been a big turnout game, and frankly, Democrats haven't been able to get their vote out in Florida in recent elections. You know, in 2022, obviously, it was more of a mixed bag where it wasn't that red wave election that I think a lot of people were predicting, but in Florida it was.
We saw Ron DeSantis win easily. You know, the Senate race wasn't close there. It wasn't like what was happening in the rest of the country, and the reason for that was Democrats stayed home.
Sort of about two things happening at the same time where the state politically has been trending more Republican and Democrats haven't been able to get their vote out. That said, there is the abortion amendment on the ballot there that's qualified for the ballot. It'll be on the November ballot, and the track record, and granted, this is a short track record.
We're talking about two years of precedent here, so it's not a huge precedent to draw from, but when we've looked at the states that have had abortion amendments on the ballot, Kansas in 2022, Michigan, a handful of other states, what we've seen is Democratic leaning voters have voted at much higher rates when you have that on the ballot. So I think there's some level of optimism there that that ballot initiative is going to draw out a lot of voters who potentially will vote for the Harris-Walls ticket at the top of the ticket. You know, that said, there'll be a lot of Republican voters, a lot of registered Republicans who will also be voting for that.
So it's not quite as cut and dry, but I think there is some source for hope for Democrats there that they'll get better turnout than they've been seen in the last few elections. And Tom Bonio, lastly, how do you feel about, personally, and what does Target Smart think about having ID to vote? It seems like the American people of the majority want to have voter ID to vote. Democrats don't want it.
Republicans are desperate for it. Where do you stand? Yeah, look, I think it's important that we protect the ballot and protect the vote. And I think that's something that all Americans agree on. I think, you know, where perhaps we diverge at times is where they make it too cumbersome, where people don't necessarily have ID and states aren't making it easy enough. I think it's important to make sure that everyone has access to the appropriate identification so they can go in and confidently vote. And we're knowing that the vote is protected. So I think a lot of states are doing a good job with that. Some states need to do a better job. Yeah, I just think it's very hard to function without an ID, period, whether it's a plane, bus, you know, you want to buy liquor. I don't know. I don't even know how you live life without ID.
I can't get in my building without it. But we'll see if that should be something I thought we'd all agree on. Tom Bonio, thanks so much. Very interesting. Thank you.
