As Election Day enters its final hours of voting, Democrats are beginning to panic that silent Trump voters are coming out of the woodwork that the party didn’t account for.
While it is still too early to project a winner of the 2024 election, CNN warned that former President Donald Trump is seeing votes from people who kept their candidate choice a secret until they cast their ballot.
In Burke, Virginia, the outlet spoke to several voters who cast their ballot for Trump— a significant chase of pace from 2020 when President Joe Biden won the state with 54.11 percent of the vote.
However, these voters told CNN they didn’t want family and friends to know they were voting for Trump.
“There were many who said they were planning to vote for Trump or they had voted for Trump,” the outlet noted. “However, when it came to sharing their views on camera, they didn’t want to, [with] one woman saying she worked in the Army. Her coworkers assume she’s voting Democrat. She didn’t want to be on television saying that she was voting otherwise,” said the correspondent.”
CNN on the ground in Virginia reports that "many" Trump voters have been unwilling to speak with them out of fear that their Democrat coworkers, friends, or neighbors will find out how they are voting. pic.twitter.com/LEi3yON3FJ
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 5, 2024
Although Vice President Kamala Harris is about seven points ahead of Trump in the state, the gap between Republicans and Democrats appears to narrow. A November 2 Chism Strategies poll found Trump and Harris tied with 45 percent of the vote. In addition, a Quantus Insights poll found that Harris led Trump by just one point, 49 to 48 percent.
Another clue that a red wave could sweep Virginia is that all signs point to Republican and former Navy SEAL Hung Cao having a successful election.
Early on in the election cycle, it looked as if the state would stay its traditional blue, but as polls begin to close, it could be a toss-up of who takes the cake. Trump holds an advantage over older voters, leading 52 percent of the vote, while Harris does better with younger voters aged 18-29. The vice president also seems to do well with the Black vote, 77 percent, while Trump is leading among the White vote.