October 28, 2024
The 2024 election is going to be closer than we all expect. Will it be Trump or Harris sitting in the oval office in January? I don’t know but I do know it’s going to depend on how many and which voters cast a ballot in 2024. And so far – voters are just not turning out the way they did four years ago when it was Trump and bidden on the ballot.
According to the a-p more than 46 million (46,218,613) early in-person votes have been cast and mail-in ballots have been turned in nationwide in 2024. Now – that sounds like a lot. And yes we still have several more days to go and yes – some states are seeing a very strong early vote turn out – but overall –the 2024 voter turnout is not even close to what we saw in 2020 when more than 100 million votes were cast either by mail or early in-person.
Keep in mind –in the modern era (since 1900s) — 2020 was a record shattering year. 158 million Americans cast a ballot which means about 67% of eligible Americans participated in that election. When you look at voting records since the 1990s the average voter turnout for a presidential election is like 58%. So 67% is a big difference.
Of course, back in 2020 there was a lot going on — we were in the thick of a global pandemic and early and mail voting drove that massive increase in overall voter turnout.
According to an analysis by MIT – in 2020 more Americans chose to vote either by mail or early rather than vote in person on election day. 46% of votes came from the mail, 26% came from early in-person voting and 28% came from election day in person votes. That’s totally different than what we saw in 2016 when 60% of votes came in person on election day 21% came from the mail and 19% came early in person.
Perhaps working against republicans in 2020 – was that – the party – lead by former president trump was really campaigning against early voting and voting by mail. Instead trump was encouraging his supporters back then to go to the polls on election day to cast a ballot for him. But that can be a gamble because things happen and sometimes because of work or personal obligations – voters can’t make it to their polling location on election day.
But it appears that’s changing in 2024.
While former President Trump is still casting doubt on early voting and mail ballots – he is encouraging his supporters to vote early. For the record trump has cast his vote by mail multiple times – and in 2020 he voted early in person. And in 2024 – it looks like Republicans are following his lead. State elections officials are reporting that the number of republicans casting early votes either in person or by mail is definitely up nationwide. According to NBC’s early vote center 40% of Republicans have either vote by mail or early in person and 42% of Democrats have vote either by mail or early in person.
Read the MIT study here.
