CNN
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There are still five weeks until Election Day, but voting has already begun across the U.S., and a CNN poll shows pre-election voting this year will be lower than the pandemic-era high of 2020.
As of Tuesday, more than 500,000 votes had already been cast in the 27 states for which data is available, according to election officials, Edison Research and Catalyst, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit advocacy groups. is being voted on. You’ll know who’s voting by November.
This is just a fraction of the approximately 158 million votes cast in the 2020 presidential election.
More than 53 million pre-election ballots have been requested by voters in the 35 states and the District of Columbia for which data is available, including states where all voters receive a ballot by mail. But overall, voting requests are down from this time four years ago, according to Catalyst data.
Catalyst CEO Michael Frias told CNN that early voting data doesn’t predict the final outcome, but that “the general population of voters of different ages, genders, and races” is increasing in the lead-up to the election. He said that he was able to clearly understand the trends in
It’s no surprise that interest in early voting has so far declined.
The 2020 election saw historic levels of pre-election voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some voters were wary of voting in person because Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommend social distancing. Four years later, as the country emerges from the pandemic, more voters could return to the ballot box either before voting or in person on Election Day.
That change is evident in how older voters have become a larger share of those requesting a vote so far compared to this point in 2020.
In Georgia, voters 65 and older accounted for 58% of requests, up from 47% in 2020. In Michigan, voters 65 and older accounted for 41% to 53%. In Pennsylvania, voters 65 and older have accounted for 49% of ballot requests so far, up from 38% in 2020. And in Wisconsin, 45% of applications came from these voters, up from 34% in 2020. Meanwhile, the number of voters in all age groups is decreasing. Requesting a ballot so far this year, the decline among this oldest group of voters has been much smaller.
During the pandemic, voting by mail became widely available to people of all ages.
While Democrats had a significant advantage over Republicans in pre-election polls four years ago, there is some early evidence that the gap may not be as wide this year.
In general, recent election cycles have shown that Democrats across the country have shown a preference for voting in advance, while many Republicans are choosing to vote on Election Day.
But since 2020, Republicans have been trying to convince their supporters to bank their votes early, despite former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud.
In the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, Democrats are demanding 62% of the total vote, compared to 26% for Republicans, according to the latest data from Catalyst. However, at the same point in the 2020 election, Democrats accounted for 65% of all ballot requests, while Republicans accounted for 24%.
A similar trend can be seen in Florida, which was once a key battleground state but has become less competitive for Democrats. Democrats accounted for 42% of requested ballots, down slightly from 44% during the same period in 2020, according to the latest data from Catalyst. Republicans accounted for 35% of requests, up from 33% in 2020, and also includes independent votes. They accounted for 20% of requests, down from 22% in 2020.
Early voting has not yet begun in most parts of the country, and Republicans have indicated in recent years that they are more likely to vote early than by mail.
Partisan data on early voting is available only in states where voters can register by party, while data by race is available more broadly.
In the key states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the racial breakdown of voters requesting ballots is about the same as it was at this point in 2020.
The story is a little different in Florida, where compared to this point in 2020, white voters made up a slightly larger share of those who requested a pre-election vote (74% vs. 69%), and Latino voters (13% vs. % vs. 16%) and a slightly smaller share of black voters (10% vs. 12%).
Catalyst’s Frías said comparing 2024 and 2020 data is difficult to compare to previous election cycles because early voting and mail-in voting four years ago were significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not that simple.
“It’s going to be a relatively normal election, meaning there was no pandemic, no outdoor events that forced people indoors and reduced the amount of in-person activity,” Frias said. .
But the data is still useful to both the Trump and Harris campaigns, offering a glimpse into how successful they have been in reaching key voters.
“The campaign has been doing voter outreach all year long,” Frias said. “This is the first real opportunity they have to meet the people they’re talking about.”
This story has been updated with additional information.