The partisan gap is narrower than it was in 2020, when views of early voting were more partisan, and Republicans take that as a good sign. But the GOP still is counting on more of its older voters to show up on Election Day, while Democrats have more votes in the bank.

The data is in line with polling in the state that has shown Trump shedding support among older voters. According to a Fox News poll of Pennsylvania, Trump is running 5 percentage points behind Harris among voters ages 65 and over, slipping back from the previous month, when he and Harris were tied with that demographic. It’s a major shift from 2020, when Trump carried 53 percent of the senior vote in Pennsylvania in a losing effort in the state.

For Democrats, it’s an unexpected reason for optimism.

Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of the data firm TargetSmart, said he has been surprised by what he is calling the “silver surge” in early voting from older Democrats.

“Our expectation going into the early vote was that it would, in general, skew substantially more Republican than in 2020,” Bonier said. “There is no more pandemic, Democrats were more Covid conscious … and Republicans have been pushing early voting.”

The senior vote is particularly important in five of the seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina — that, according to U.S. Census data, have more residents over the age of 65 than the national average.

According to modeling data shared by a Democratic campaign operative tracking early voting, across the Blue Wall states, Democratic voters over the age of 65 are running 10 to 20 percent ahead of their Republican counterparts with respect to registered turnout.

And the same Democratic modeling shows Black voters over the age of 65 — and in particular older Black women, a core Democratic bloc — are returning ballots at a higher rate than any other demographic group.

In Pennsylvania, the biggest battleground in the Blue Wall, Republicans are encouraged because the partisan gap in ballots returned so far has narrowed significantly since 2020. Democrats hold only a 25-point advantage, compared to nearly 50 points four years ago. That is a sign that GOP efforts to encourage their voters to bank ballots early have had success.

But what that means for the overall makeup of the electorate when voting is complete is less clear. Roughly 35 percent of Republicans who have cast ballots so far in Pennsylvania are voters who cast ballots on Election Day in 2020, according to a POLITICO analysis of the state’s early voting data.

By contrast, around 8 percent of Democrats who have voted in the state voted on Election Day in 2020. Those figures suggest that the early vote in Pennsylvania is likely to be redder than four years ago — and the Election Day vote is likely to be bluer — based on how voters are switching the timing of their votes.

Still, it’s not unusual for both seniors and Democrats to cast their votes sooner, both in the earliest days of absentee voting and before Election Day overall.

Pennsylvania Trump campaign spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement, “Americans of all ages and backgrounds are unifying behind President Trump’s agenda to Make America Safe, Strong, Wealthy, and Great Again, and this reality is playing out in record Republican voter registrations and turnout across battleground states, including Pennsylvania.”

And Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania and the CEO of Quantum Communications, noted that “Republicans and older Republicans in particular, generally, like to vote on Election Day because that’s what they’re accustomed to.”

“So if the numbers are that tightly squeezed, it says that Republicans are going to do very well on November 5,” he said.

Earlier this week, RNC Chair Michael Whatley told POLITICO that “what we are seeing in terms of metrics, voter registration, the early vote, the absentee vote numbers look really good across the country, especially the battleground states.”

A recent CNN poll of Blue Wall states found Harris leading by a slim margin to Trump among voters 65 and older in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump led against Harris with older voters in Wisconsin.

Nationally, a recent ABC News poll found Harris leads among voters over 65 by 5 percentage points — a 10-point swing towards Democrats from 2020, when Trump won voters over 65 by 5 points.

Bob Ward, a partner with Fabrizio Ward who has conducted polling for AARP, said he wasn’t surprised to see that seniors are making up the majority of the early vote so far.

“Seniors across the board are the most motivated to vote,” said Ward. “They are the most informed citizens we have paying attention to the news and they are, I think, more so than most vested in the outcomes of elections, because of how many people are dependent on government programs of that age group — Medicare and Social Security are super important.”

Ward said that while both Republican and Democratic seniors are concerned about the economy, Republicans have been motivated by immigration and the border, while Democrats have been propelled by threats to democracy, abortion and reproductive rights.

Both campaigns have been working to shore up support among senior voters. On Tuesday, Trump hosted an event in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, where he held a round table aimed at seniors and took questions on topics ranging from immigration to Medicare and Social Security. Trump has proposed eliminating the taxation of Social Security benefits, and has talked about tax breaks for at-home caregivers. But he also called immigration, a cornerstone of his campaign, the “biggest senior issue.”

Meanwhile Harris has also said she opposes any plan that would reduce or cut Social Security benefits and has touted her proposal to expand Medicare to provide home care to help families who are struggling with the costs of long-term care. Her closing message has centered around threats to democracy and reproductive rights.

Bonier said that older women in particular may be mobilizing to vote in response to the Dobbs decision.

“They’re fired up,” he said.