OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The significant increase in early voting has led many to believe that the election could be effectively decided days or weeks before Election Day. However, current data indicate that this is not the case, and the numbers are not encouraging for Democrats, the New York Post reported Friday.
Early voting numbers fall far short of some estimates, with only 4.2 million Americans having cast their ballots so far, according to John Couvillon, a Republican political strategist who provides daily updates on early and mail voting.
While 4.2 million may seem substantial, it is a small fraction compared to the 158.6 million votes cast in 2020. More importantly, early voting is down by 45% compared to the same point in 2020, Couvillon’s numbers reveal, The Post added.
“The number of early votes will rise substantially in the next two weeks as some states send out their mail ballots and others open in-person early-voting centers. But the share of votes cast early is still likely to be much lower even after this happens,” the report said.
The most noteworthy development is the sharp decrease in mail ballot requests, which have dropped by 58% compared to 2020 in states that do not automatically send mail ballots to all voters.
This decline is particularly pronounced in the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina, where requests for mail ballots have fallen by 84% and 75%, respectively.
Some of the decline in mail ballot requests is likely due to the damage caused by Hurricane Helene, but the major population centers in both Georgia and North Carolina were largely unaffected. Voters in these states simply prefer in-person early voting when it is widely available, The Post noted.
The decrease is smaller yet still noticeable in the three Midwestern blue-wall states. Mail ballot requests have dropped by 59% in Wisconsin, 36% in Pennsylvania, and 24% in Michigan.
The trend is most concerning for Democrats, as their voters have traditionally favored mail-in ballots in recent years. For instance, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by building a 1.4-million-vote advantage with absentee voters, which was enough to offset Donald Trump’s 1.33-million-vote lead among Election Day voters.
With potentially up to 1 million fewer mail ballots in Pennsylvania this year, Democrats will need to execute a stronger ground game just to match their 2020 performance, noted The Post. Additionally, there is a troubling sign from Virginia indicating that Republicans have become adept at leveraging early voting.
Although overall early voting is down compared to 2020, a significantly higher number of votes have been cast in the most Republican congressional districts than in the safely Democratic ones.
A comparison between the highly Democratic, college-educated Northern Virginia and the predominantly Republican, non-college white rural areas of Virginia presents an even more striking contrast.
In the inner DC suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria, each area awarded Biden over 80% of the vote. However, the number of early votes cast in these regions is now less than half of what was recorded at the same point four years ago.
In stark contrast, this decline does not occur in Trump’s strongest counties. He won 10 rural counties in the far western part of the state with 80% or more of the vote in 2020. These counties are over 90% white, with no more than 24% of residents holding a four-year college degree.
This area is deeply aligned with the MAGA movement, with Trump securing between 85% and 96% of the vote in this year’s GOP primary against Nikki Haley. These voters are often receptive to election fraud conspiracies and highly skeptical of early voting.
Despite this, early voting in these Trump-dominated areas has increased since 2020, said The Post, which added: “It’s impossible to know what these statistics mean. It’s also impossible to spin them into good news for Harris.”
