The initial vote count is Many Republicans are showing up casting their ballots Before Election Day, however, that doesn’t mean an automatic victory for former President Donald Trump and Republicans on the ballot.
Historically, Democrats have been more likely to vote early in states where it’s an option, but just a week before the election, they’re barely ahead of Republican early polls nationally.
A partisan divide in early voting was particularly noticeable in the 2020 election, when Democrats were more hesitant than Republicans to gather in public because of the Covid-19 pandemic and many states expanded early voting options. Trump routinely criticized primary voting in 2020, which exacerbated that imbalance. Now, the pandemic is over, and Trump has undergone a transition: Although he sometimes disparages the practice of early voting by mail, he has also Actively encourages his followers to vote early.
That enthusiasm now appears to be paying dividends: According to NBC’s calculations, 44,101,704 primary votes were cast by mail or in personoutside of it Total registered voters are more than 160 million. The final total was seen in the 2016 election 57.2 million primary votesAccording to the Election Commission, Out of a total electorate of over 135 million. It seems since the 2020 election There is a growing trend towards early voting.
Most states offer primary voting by mail or in person. Alabama and Mississippi are exceptions, though they cast absentee ballots. (Kentucky and Missouri offer limited early voting options.) With early ballots coming up in many states — each with their own voting rules and time frames — early voting data can move quickly. And that means we can only learn so much from it.
Tell us what early voting data can — and can’t — do
At this point in the early voting period, early voting data tells us exactly who is voting early.
“Of those who have voted so far – not all of them, but in general, they are your super voters,” Michael McDonald“They’ve already made up their mind who they’re going to vote for, they’re going to cast their ballot first,” who runs the University of Florida Election Lab, told Vox.
Typically, McDonald noted, those “super voters” tend to be Democrats. They are registered with a particular party and tend to be older voters. Women are historically more likely to vote earlier; That trend holds up to the data available so far, McDonald said. The difference is, a large portion of those early female voters are Republicans.
And a larger number of Republican votes earlier this year may not have any bearing on who wins the election.
“I’m very cautious about voting early,” John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Vox. “We’ve had changes in early voting trends and different types of early voting trends — and then, of course, a very strange election. [in] 2020. The basic trend, looking at the ’90s, 2000 and 2016 elections, is that we’ve had only a slow increase in each election in the number of people voting by mail as well as the number of people voting early.”
Early voting shows a turnout trend, Fortier said, which he predicts will hold this cycle. “You often see a very big bump in the first three or so days of the first voting period, especially if it’s a long voting period. And then you look a little less [turnout]And then there’s a big, big push in the last five, six days, as we build up to Election Day.”
But both the 2020 election and Trump’s push for his followers to vote early have changed the dynamics in such a way that it is difficult to apply historical trends to early 2024 voting.
Mail-in ballots, which are the default option in some western states like Colorado, Oregon and Washington, represent another sacrifice entirely; The data is lagged from personal primary voting data. And Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, McDonald said.
Also, logistical issues, such as mail-in ballot mailing dates, can further skew the data, as occurred in Clark County, Nevada. Early voting The polls showed shockingly little for this point – Unless it is discovered that the ballots were sent later than the previous year and will therefore be returned and counted after the start time of voting.
“We see a lot of Republicans voting in person, but we know there are going to be lots and lots of mail ballots,” especially in western states like Washington and Oregon, where in-person voting is very limited, McDonald said. “And we know that Democrats are choosing to vote that way, and we’ll start looking at that later. And so it creates this imbalance.”
Ultimately, Fortier said, we’ll likely see the highest voter turnout on Election Day itself, though this election overall could signal a shift toward more early voting. Experts may be able to accurately predict which states will pass their primary vote tallies as early as this weekend, but this may be the exception to the rule.
