'Stop talking and making excuses': GOP strategist warns Republicans they're losing the early vote war

According to a report from Politico, Republicans are losing the early voting war to the Democrats and one GOP strategist claimed it was a "warning flare" that things are dire for the party with only 11 days to go before the election.

Pointing out that "Democrats have opened up a yawning gap in early voting over Republicans in six of the most crucial battleground states," the report breaks down state-by-state the travails of the GOP which appears to be counting on a massive wave of voters on November 3rd that may not happen according to some analysts who are looking at the long lines of early voters eager to cast their votes for Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

According to veteran GOP strategist Scott Reed, "Some Republicans are stuck in a model that we always run up the score on Election Day to make up the difference. I think running an election in a superpolarized electorate, you want to win early voting. Let’s go. Let’s stop talking and making excuses,” also adding all indications about early voting should be a "warning flare" for the GOP.

Noting that voting in pivotal Florida is picking up and that, "Democrats have dominated voting by mail and on Thursday held a historic lead in total pre-Election Day ballots cast of 463,000, or 10 percentage points," the report adds, "At a glance, the top-line Democratic margins also look huge in Arizona (16 percentage points), Michigan (24 points), North Carolina (14 points), Pennsylvania (46 points), and Wisconsin (22), according to the analysis from Hawkfish, which is funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a Trump foe."

According to senior Republican data analyst Chris Wilson, the big lead Democrats have may be insurmountable with the little time left.

“The concerning thing for Republicans is that once a Democrat vote is cast, or once a vote is cast in general, it can't be taken back,” Wilson stated. "That to me is the bigger issue here: Our window to message and convert any of these voters away from voting Democrat is shorter than the number of days left in the campaign.”

As a further warning he stated, " But if you look at the early vote, we have to win 2-to-1 on Election Day. And that's probably just about every contested race in America.”

Politico goes on to report that it is likely early GOP and Democratic voters are voting along party lines and that Trump's difficulties will be due to votes cast by independents who have shown a strong preference for Biden.

As one Democratic pollster in Pennsylvania put it, Trump had a chance but then things went sideways.

"When Trump started acting more normally in the summer, he regained ground. But then you had this complete meltdown starting with the debate and him getting Covid and at that point ... people started voting,” explained Neil Oxman of The Campaign Group.

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