Does the Early Mail-In Vote Offer Any Clues about the Election?

The early data points to an enthusiasm gap between the candidates.

An absentee voter mail-in ballot showing the names of the presidential and vice presidential candidates for the November 5 US general election. Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP.

The election is already underway across the country, with early mail-in voting occurring in many states, including key battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Michigan. Of course, we can’t know with any certainty for which candidate any given ballot was cast. After all, the ballots aren’t open and counted yet. But can the data from the mail-in ballots tell us anything at this point?

The answer is yes, to a degree. That’s because some states track the political party registration of the voter requesting and returning a ballot. And some track demographic data, such as race, gender, and age. Still others have records of whether the voter has voted before and how many times.

Together, this can start to paint a picture, if by definition a fuzzy one, of what we can expect to see once those ballots are opened and counted. On Election Night 2020, for example, I was able to reassure folks that the number of still-outstanding mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania would be enough to tip that state to Joe Biden by more than 70,000 votes, even though he was trailing in the same-day count as of that evening. 

So how do things look so far in 2024? That’s the subject of today’s piece. Before I dive into the data (and fair warning, there are a lot of charts in this piece), I want to discuss mail-in voting in general, why it’s still a factor, and why we can’t so easily compare this presidential election to the last one.

2020 was a special case

In the 2020 election, mail-in voting was a huge factor that affected the race in some key ways. It was a pandemic year, so Democrats (who tend to follow health guidance from experts far more than Republicans) utilized mail-in voting in large numbers. Meanwhile, then-president Trump was sowing widespread doubt among Republicans over the integrity of mail-in voting, leading many in the MAGA base to favor waiting to vote until Election Day. 

This wound up giving Democrats a structural advantage. They were able to bank their votes, while Republicans had to rely on massive day-of efforts. From a get-out-the-vote standpoint, it’s far easier to have several weeks to prod voters to turn in their ballots by putting them in the mail than it is to motivate them to show up on a single day, especially if the weather is bad.

The disparity between Democrats and Republicans on the use of mail-in ballots also created what’s known as the “red mirage.” That’s the illusion showing Republicans way ahead on Election Day as the counting gets underway, only to see that lead get chipped away as the mail-in votes get counted.

In places like Pennsylvania, where by law mail-in ballots cannot begin to be counted until Election Day, the red mirage was particularly pronounced. The Trump campaign sought to exploit this by prematurely proclaiming victory while votes were still being tallied. When Republicans cry “Stop the count!” they really mean stop the counting of late-counted ballots, including mail-ins and large tallies from densely populated urban areas that will skew heavily Democratic.

This year, Republicans have put millions of dollars into a “re-education” of their voters, pleading with them to bank their votes by casting ballots early by mail. Meanwhile, without the threat of contagion hanging over polling places, Democrats are expected to return in large numbers to in-person voting. This is especially true among younger voters, who tend to do things last minute.

Given this, experts and analysts expect to see a sharp drop-off in early voting. They are also waiting to see whether the difference in voting behavior between Democrats and Republicans would narrow considerably due to the GOP’s new messaging around the importance of voting early.

Let’s take a look first at the broad national numbers so far. For purposes of my analysis, I am relying heavily on (and want to thank) the work of Professor Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who tracks American elections and has compiled his data at UF’s Election Lab. I also want to thank Tom Bonier of TargetSmart, where early vote data is not only compiled but presented in such a user-friendly way!

The National Picture

So far this election cycle, as of October 7, around 46.9 million voters have requested ballots by mail, according to the 2024 November election early voting tracker at the University of Florida Election Lab. 

Among those states that actually track party registration data, Democrats are requesting more than twice the number of mail-in ballots than Republicans are. That’s more or less in line with what we’ve seen before.

The number I’m more interested in, however, appears in the far right column. Among voters who have requested mail-in ballots, Democrats have actually returned a higher percentage than Republicans, 2.6 percent to 2.0 percent. That’s 30 percent more from the Dems than the GOP. To me, that indicates that there may be an enthusiasm gap. Republicans have the same ballots Democrats have, they’re just letting them sit on their kitchen tables a bit longer so far.

I should note that it’s quite likely that Republicans who have those ballots will get around to sending them in. But it’s their relative lower urgency in doing so that has piqued my interest.

But wait, couldn’t that be explained because the states that use mail-in voting are dominated by big, blue states like California and Oregon that hate Trump? It turns out, the data so far doesn’t even include those states. But it does include several big red ones like Texas and Florida and some key swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Just as the national polling doesn’t tell us who will win the Electoral College, national mail-in data isn’t able to tell us much behind some broad strokes. So let’s zoom in a bit and look at some numbers in some battleground states. 

Today I want to look primarily at Pennsylvania, which has more robust early voting data broken down by party registration, and then a bit at Michigan where a big question has loomed over whether the Harris campaign can win back Black voters who were previously lukewarm on Joe Biden.

Pennsylvania: Which Party Is Voting More Enthusiastically?

Both campaigns are heavily focused on winning Pennsylvania. Neither has an easy path to 270 Electoral College votes without it. If Harris wins it, plus the other two blue wall states and that little special district in Nebraska (which she is favored to win), that’s the ballgame. If Trump wins it, Harris will have to take two of the sunbelt states—Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, or Georgia—to make up for it. That’s not a great place to be.

For those of us who like to play around with the data, Pennsylvania is also a goldmine. That’s because it tracks a lot of it and offers great real-time updates.

When the first numbers started to come in for Pennsylvania in early October, Professor McDonald made the following observation: 

Similar 2020 pattern emerging. More Democrats requested mail ballots *and* among those that have mail ballots Democrats are returning ballots at a higher rate.

He shared this snapshot five days ago, showing Republicans returning only 18.5 percent of the 33.4K mail-in ballots that had been accepted. That is a return rate more than a full point below that of the Democrats:

To say MAGA election watchers were unhappy with his take would be an understatement. This is only the urban areas! Wait till more data comes out! You’re a shill for the Democrats!

McDonald acknowledged these figures were quite early, but he noted that the return rates were true for the counties as well as the cities. 

Then, new figures came out, updated as of three days ago. The total number of ballots accepted jumped from 33K to nearly 90K. But the percentage of them that were GOP ballots barely moved, up just 1 point. Democrats were still far outpacing Republicans.

And now look at the numbers today. We’re up to 136K mail-in ballots in and the percentage of those that were returned by Republicans is actually down a bit.

This indicates to me that there is an enthusiasm gap between the two parties in the returning of mail-in ballots, and importantly it’s bearing out over time, at least so far. The gap between returned Dem and GOP mail-in ballots now stands at nearly 75K. That number is only going to grow, and we’ll keep it in mind as Election Day nears.

Pennsylvania: Did the GOP succeed in detoxifying mail-in voting?

Earlier, I noted that the GOP has spent millions trying to undo the damage Trump did with the base when he poisoned their attitudes around mail-in voting. So did they succeed in getting more of their voters to bank their votes early?

The numbers so far suggest that they did only to some extent. As Tom Bonier observed last Thursday,

Still too early to draw any conclusions here (we will get a critical mass very soon), but if the GOP had high hopes about mail voting in PA, we aren't seeing any evidence their hard work is paying off yet.

He shared this snapshot to support his conclusion:

There’s a lot going on here, so let me highlight the key points. The chart compares Pennsylvania mail-in voting as of 33 days before each of the elections in 2020, 2022, and 2024, based on the registered parties of the voters. It shows that Republicans comprise only 18.4 percent of the mail-in votes so far this year (we saw close to this same number in Professor McDonald’s chart). But this compares unfavorably to the GOP’s share of 25.5 percent among all returned ballots by this same time in 2020.

Fun fact: You can see that Republicans were much more motivated to vote in 2022 by mail compared to 2020 or 2024. By the same point in time that year, they made up over a third of the ballots returned. We would expect to see higher motivation in an off-year election where they could cast protest votes against the administration.

Another wonky sidenote: Bonier observed that “just over 1 in 3 of the PA GOPs who have already voted by mail cast their ballot on [Election Day] in 2020, as compared to just 1 in 10 of PA Dems. So the GOP is converting voters to mail voting, but that still isn't enough to keep up with [the] Dems.”

I wanted to see if these numbers were holding up a few days later with over 100,000 more mail-in ballots counted. And yup! It’s remarkable how little the percentages have changed, even with four times as many votes in.

Republicans still have less than 19 percent of the returned ballots, with Democrats dominating with nearly 74 percent.

As far as the red mirage goes, we can expect a far smaller effect this year. So far, the total number of requested mail-in ballots is around 1.5 million, as we saw in Prof. McDonald’s charts. In 2020, the number of mail-in / early ballots cast was over 2.6 million. Democrats may dominate with mail-in ballots by a factor of nearly 4:1, but there will be far fewer of them this time around, meaning the day-of election results, before all the mail-in ballots are added, will be a lot closer than in 2020.

Keep in mind that Harris may still be trailing Trump in those early returns on Election Night, but never forget that the mail-ins and big Democratic numbers from Philadelphia may still be coming!

Pennsylvania: The gender gap

Another factor I have been watching is whether women are voting earlier and in higher numbers than in previous elections. If true, that also would show an enthusiasm gap with a real effect on actual votes cast. The gender gap for Harris among women is looking, at least in the polls, to be the highest in history. So, is it showing up in the actual early voting?

Perhaps. The data is early, but comparing 2020 and 2024, and using this same point in time because I like to compare apples to apples, women voters are currently returning a higher percentage of the total mail-in votes cast. It’s nearly two percent higher than at this same point in 2020.

That said, the final figures on early voting for 2020 showed a still higher percentage of women, at 56.1 percent. We’re not at that level yet, but in my view, it’s because the young people haven’t gotten around to voting yet. Voters under 30 only make up 4.4 percent of the early vote so far. In 2020, by the end, that number had risen to 12.7 percent. That will skew the percentage of early women voters higher for the Democrats in a way that is likely to reveal an even bigger final gender gap in the early voting.

Pennsylvania: Are Black voters showing enthusiasm for Harris?

When Joe Biden was the nominee, Democrats suffered from an enthusiasm gap, especially among younger voters of color who wanted a candidate they felt better understood their needs and lives. After Harris became the nominee, Democrats closed that enthusiasm gap in the polling and even pulled ahead of the GOP for the first time.

But is that translating into actual votes? The data so far suggests that it is. It’s still early, but there is a strong signal that more Black voters are voting early and enthusiastically by mail than in the last two elections at this same point in time. In fact, the percentage—a whopping 18 percent of all returned ballots—is rather off the charts. And so, by the way, are the numbers for other minorities, at least compared to past elections. 

I don’t want to get too far over our skis here. These numbers could easily reflect a higher number of ballots returned from more urban areas, meaning they can and probably will settle back down to something closer to prior elections. But they could also reflect higher enthusiasm generally among minority voters to cast their ballots for a candidate like Harris. As with the women voter numbers, young people haven’t weighed in with their early votes yet, and that will tend to skew the early vote numbers among minorities even higher, given that the youth vote is far more ethnically diverse.

I see nothing in these numbers that are big warning signs for the Harris campaign, while I do see some for Trump. His campaign will have to get more GOP voters to fill out and send their mail-in ballots before the Dems build even more of a formidable lead. But that’s honestly hard to do so long as Trump is still out there creating doubts about mail-in voting.

Michigan: A peek at the Black vote there

The critical swing state of Michigan doesn’t break down the early vote by party registration. But it does track demographic information, including race. And here again, there appear to be some positive signs for Harris in the early vote tallies.

While the total number of mail-in ballots received is down sharply from 2020 (again, due to the relatively lower pandemic concerns this year), the racial makeup of those turning in their completed ballots caught Bonier’s attention. He wrote,

Again, analyzing early votes at this phase can be tricky, especially because in many states not every county is reporting turnout data at the same cadence. But this info from Michigan is interesting, given the huge turnout share of Black voters.

Here is a part of the chart he shared four days ago:

Bonier explained,

I'm being more circumspect at this point because it is still so early and there are relatively few voters reported as having cast a ballot. But the chart is comparing the racial composition of those who have returned a ballot already to the same point in 2020 and 2022. What is interesting to me is that Black voters are a much larger share of the votes cast so far this time around, relative to the past elections. There's a broad expectation that a larger share [of] GOPs will vote early this year, relative to 2020, but that not only isn't materializing here, we are seeing more Dems having voted thus far.

By the numbers, the far right column shows that Black voters comprise 18.6 percent of the mail-in votes cast so far this year, compared to 8.1 percent by this same point in 2020, a shift of over 10 points. The percentage of white voters who have cast ballots fell by 11 points using the same comparison. 

Black voters in Michigan are far more likely to be Democrats than whites are, so seeing a relative rise in Black enthusiasm alongside a relative fall in white enthusiasm is welcome news for Harris and bad news for Trump, who has sought to cut into Harris’s support among Blacks, particularly younger Black males.

I was curious so went back to this same chart to see what today’s figures looked like. With 140,000 more votes counted, the Black share remains more than twice as high as we saw in 2020, with nearly all of that coming at the expense of the white share of the early vote:

Michigan will be won or lost depending on Black voter enthusiasm and turnout. These figures are encouraging for the Harris camp, even if overall early voting is down, as expected.

Some cautionary notes and final thoughts

I would be remiss not to include plenty of caveats here. The first of course is that while we love to see enthusiasm like this, these are still small numbers compared to the expected final count, and things could change. Republicans may be slow to send in their ballots, but most eventually will.

I also didn’t include early vote numbers out of the Southern states of Georgia and North Carolina because of severe disruptions to those states from Hurricane Helene and a delay in processing by North Carolina when it sought to remove RFK Jr. from the ballot. It still isn’t clear whether early ballot data in those states will show much of anything given the severity of the flood damage.

With that said, I am encouraged by these numbers and believe they show Harris is doing what she needs to do to be in a position to win critical battlegrounds like Pennsylvania. And Democrats everywhere should return their mail-in ballots as soon as possible to bank them and free up more volunteer time to focus on voters who haven’t cast their ballots yet!

I’ll do another update of early voting after more data comes in. At this point, and with these figures, I’d much rather be Harris than Trump.