The Rise of Early Voting

Participation in early and mail-in voting - as well as its rejection by parts of the Republican Party - reached new heights during the 2020 presidential elections that took place during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. While 2022 doesn’t come close here, the latest election does surpass the 2018 midterms for the share of early and mail-in voters. According to preliminary numbers, around 40 percent of those casting a ballot did so through in advance this year. In 2018, that number had been 33 percent which had already been an astonishing result for a midterm which have historically see less participation and less early voting.

Some of the rise also comes from states which transitioned to all-mail elections recently, like Hawaii and Vermont, or only recently started to allowed early voting, like Rhode Island.

The numbers by the U.S. Elections Project also show that the rise of early voting had started even before the pandemic made casting a ballot via mail, by using a drop box or by showing up early the more popular option. The project at the University of Florida has been collection data on early voting since 2008. Back then, 24 percent of the vote was turned in early or by mail. In the last presidential election before the coronavirus pandemic, in 2016, that share had already climbed to 34 percent.

According to the project's founder, disagreements about early voting are as old as advance voting itself. But sentiments around the practice hardened under President Donald Trump, who went on a crusade against mail-in and early voting, which culminated in the conspiracy that the 2020 election was manipulated and that advance voting played a crucial part in it. The narrative is supported by a significant part of the Republican Party and has been used extensively in campaigning for the midterms despite countless investigations and lawsuits not having turned up any large-scale voter fraud in 2020. After the practice was denounced by Trump and the coronavirus itself became a partisan issue, the mail-in and early turnout in 2020 slanted heavily Democratic. Considering both parties' established bases prior to 2020, it is not clear, however, that Democrats have in the past been more likely to vote by mail.