Early-voting data shows Republican reversal appears to be paying off

Americans are voting ahead of Election Day in historic numbers this year. That includes Republicans, who appear to be responding favorably to a new message from former president Donald Trump: It’s okay to vote early.

Dozens of states have opened in-person early-voting locations, and turnout has been robust. In Georgia, more than 1.6 million people had cast in-person ballots by midmorning Tuesday - nearly one-third of the total vote from four years ago. North Carolina hit 1.4 million Tuesday, the sixth day of early voting. And in Nevada, Republicans voting in person have outnumbered Democrats - a reversal from four years ago.

Nationwide, more than 18 million Americans have cast ballots in person or by mail so far this year, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida. That’s more than 10 percent of the overall total who cast ballots four years ago.

What’s less clear is whether the initial burst of voting enthusiasm will last - and to what extent it reflects a shift from heavy rates of mail voting four years ago during the coronavirus pandemic.

Republican participation appears to at least partially reflect Trump’s change of heart on early voting, which he slammed without foundation in 2020 as riddled with fraud but has heavily promoted this campaign season.

“If you have a ballot, return it immediately,” Trump told an Atlanta rally crowd on Oct. 15, the first day of early voting in Georgia. “If not, go tomorrow as soon as you can go to the polls and vote.”

Trump’s rhetoric in 2020 - which included false allegations that Democrats had cast millions of fraudulent ballots that lifted Joe Biden to victory - suppressed voting by mail and early voting among his supporters. Some in the GOP linked those attacks to lower turnout and even losses in some corners of the country, including in two Georgia runoff elections on Jan. 5, 2021, that cost the party control of the U.S. Senate.

Democrats have embraced early voting for years, in part because it leaves less to chance on Election Day, when busy schedules, bad weather or illness can keep voters from making it to the polls. Known as “banking” votes, early voting also allows campaigns to be more efficient with resources as Election Day draws near by focusing attention on a smaller and smaller group of voters who have not yet cast ballots. Many in the GOP had encouraged Trump to change his tune on both early and mail voting as a way to level the playing field with Democrats, and his early-voting push has been eagerly embraced by others in the party.

“We can’t afford to wait,” Wisconsin GOP Chairman Brian Schimming said during a news conference Monday. “We encourage people to vote early because you never know what’s going on with the weather.”

Schimming’s counterpart in Michigan, Pete Hoekstra, posted a photo on social media of himself and his wife, each of them holding mail ballots. They were “too excited to wait,” he wrote.

Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who compiles voting numbers for the Election Lab, said his data shows that most Americans who have cast ballots in person are high-propensity voters. That means, he said, that they aren’t necessarily new voters. They are often people who previously voted on Election Day, or by mail in 2020, and are now opting to cast their ballots early.

McDonald also warned against drawing too many conclusions from early-voting numbers, whether low or high, because reporting lags are common.

He said the real test of whether Trump’s message has fully penetrated his base is whether the numbers remain strong over the next two weeks. One factor is likely to work against him: Younger voters tend to cast their ballots much later, and they will skew for Harris.

“That’s happened every cycle since I’ve been watching,” McDonald said.

Even as Trump has embraced early in-person voting, his message has been more mixed on mail voting, which he has continued to criticize even while occasionally encouraging his supporters to use it.

In a recent Fox News interview, Trump said he was not confident in the election because of mail voting but added that he did not want to discourage people from voting that way.

At an August rally in Johnstown, Pa., he said, “We want to get rid of mail-in voting.” But in North Carolina, he has encouraged those displaced by Hurricane Helene to request mail ballots wherever they are temporarily living and has even asked state election officials to make it easier for displaced voters to return their ballots to their home counties.

In Pennsylvania, Republican officials have actively encouraged their supporters to vote by mail, investing millions in get-out-the-vote efforts. But they have also filed lawsuits seeking to throw out mail-in ballots over technicalities, such as putting the wrong date on the ballot envelope.

At an event Sunday in suburban Milwaukee, Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance called for supporters to cast ballots “in every single way that they can” - even as he expressed reservations about early voting.

“I don’t like election season,” Vance said. “I like Election Day, but as Donald Trump has said, it is what it is. And if the Democrats are going to use every method of voting possible, then the Republicans, we’ve got to do it too.”

That mixed message appears to be having an impact on returns. In states that track the party affiliation of returned ballots, Democrats are vastly outvoting Republicans among mailed ballots, just as they did in 2020.

In Nevada, where preliminary data shows that about 250,000 voters have cast ballots so far, Democrats represent 43 percent of returned mail ballots while Republicans account for about 30 percent.

Republican in-person turnout, meanwhile, is ahead of where it was four years ago. In Nevada, the GOP share of in-person totals was 52 percent as of late Monday, whereas the Democratic share was 28 percent.

In Pennsylvania, more than 1 million mail-in ballots had been returned as of Tuesday morning. Of that total, about 650,000 are Democrats, 300,000 are Republicans, and 100,000 are neither. In 2020, more than 2.6 million Pennsylvanians returned mail-in ballots. The state has no in-person early voting, which could prove problematic for Trump since Republican voters are not flocking to mail voting, McDonald said.

Seth Bluestein, a Philadelphia city commissioner, said that in elections since the pandemic, more voters have returned to casting their ballots on Election Day. “I don’t think we can draw any conclusions about voter enthusiasm from the early mail ballots,” he said. “A lot of voters plan to vote in person, so I don’t think there is any comparative election we could look at.”

Elsewhere the data is harder to read, and experts cautioned that in all states, early returns should be examined cautiously because trends can easily reverse themselves. This year brings unique challenges in interpreting the numbers because the 2020 vote, held amid lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions, was so exceptional.

In Arizona, about half a million voters had cast their ballots as of Sunday, according to data tracked by Phoenix-based Democratic consultant Sam Almy. Republicans, who hold a registration advantage in the state, were nearly on pace with early ballot returns compared with four years ago, while Democrats were far behind.

But Almy and others cautioned that before the pandemic, Democrats were known to drop off their mail ballots on Election Day, while Republicans typically put their ballots in the mail.

“Either Republicans are coming back to what their traditional performance looked like, or Democrats are significantly underperforming,” said Republican consultant and pollster Paul Bentz. Bottom line, he said: It’s too soon to draw any conclusions.

Overall, election officials and voting advocates predicted that early-voting participation will remain robust. The method’s popularity was growing before the pandemic, and that trajectory is likely to continue, they said.

Detroit kicked off early voting on Saturday with a block party hosted by the Detroit Pistons and a performance by Lil Baby and other rappers. Early in-person voting is new in Michigan, with all jurisdictions required to make it available for at least nine days under an amendment to the state constitution that voters approved in 2022. In Detroit, about 4,000 people have voted early so far at the city’s 14 early-voting centers - a figure that advocates consider solid for a new method of voting.

Meanwhile, more than 1.1 million Michigan residents had voted by mail as of Monday, according to the secretary of state’s office, out of 7.2 million active registered voters.

In Wisconsin, in-person voting kicked off Tuesday. Democrats planned to try to maximize early voting in the Democratic stronghold of Madison with a rally featuring vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz and former president Barack Obama.

As of Monday morning, about 603,000 Wisconsin voters had applied for mail ballots, including more than 326,000 who have filled them out and returned them, according to state election officials.

That’s far below the number who had voted by mail at this stage of the 2020 campaign, when voters turned to mail ballots in unprecedented numbers. At the equivalent point that year, 1.4 million voters had requested mail ballots and 863,000 had returned them to clerks. Wisconsin has about 4.7 million eligible voters.

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Marley reported from Madison, Wis., and Wingett Sanchez reported from Phoenix. Marianne LeVine in Asheville, N.C., contributed to this report.