I'm not getting much work done today, so I might as well give my thoughts... The thing I'm keeping my eye on is how quickly the NC Gov race is called for Josh Stein, and how far off the pace Harris is to him and the other Dems running statewide in the early vote. Any signal of an overperformance for Republicans in the governor race, and it's gonna be a rough night here and elsewhere. Key counties to watch:
Nash - Biden won it by .23 or 120 votes. It's the classic swing county in a swing state.
New Hanover - The demographic makeup and 50-48 winning margin here for Biden in 2020 mirrored statewide results in PA. A possible bell weather county
Granville & Franklin - 2 purplish counties near the VA border surrounded by bluer ones. They split for the Dem in the governor race in 2020, but Trump carried both against Biden. A Harris win statewide requires minimum losses here, or she'll have to run up a bigger margin in the surrounding blue
Cabarrus - The media is obsessed with Union county, southeast of Charlotte, but if any metro area county flips, it will be this one, northeast of it. Democrat Roy Cooper lost it by 4 points while winning reelection by 5 statewide in 2020. Trump carried it by 9. If Stein is truly ahead by 10+ points in the governor race, this should pop up and remain blue on his map, and have an uplifting effect on the rest of the ticket.
On the other hand, it also has the potential to deliver a warning sign for Harris. A Black woman running for a state supreme court seat, Cheri Beasley, lost this county by 10 points in 2020, while losing statewide by only 400 votes. Had she just matched Biden's number of -9, she would have made it across the finish line alongside Cooper and Stein. Instead she lost the state. In 2022 she lost the county by 13, and state by 5, in her Senate race.
I'm also on the lookout for a theory I have that those who went to college, but didn't attain a 4 year degree, are the hidden voters that pollsters haven't weighted correctly this cycle. In ABC last national poll which had Harris up 3 overall, Trump was ahead by 30 among those who didn't go to college. However his lead went down to 10 when they include those who went but didn't finish, in the non-college number. I think Harris more than likely has a big lead with women in this category. If she does, and they make up a larger share of the electorate than anticipated, it could show up in NC and a more comfortable VA margin, before it's seen in an Iowa or Wisconsin.
Either way, I'm of the belief that VA, NC, and GA will give us a pretty clear picture of where the race stands by the time we start getting the numbers from the blue wall and western states.