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Early Voting Has Started. Here’s What to Watch.
36 days Note: Includes states that can start sending mail ballots to voters and states that have begun early in-person voting.
until election day
Early voting, by mail and in person, surged in the 2020 presidential election — driving a massive increase in overall turnout and helping Joseph R. Biden Jr. secure his victory. This year, we’re tracking how the early vote will unfold without pandemic-era restrictions, and what it can tell us about the effects of new laws in some competitive states.
Ballots requests as a percentage of voters, compared with requests in 2020. Notes: Data is for ballots requested or sent, depending on the available data in each state.
Absentee ballots requested so far
The strength of early voting in this election will be important for the campaigns of both former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. In 2020, about 60 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of Republicans voted by mail, according to a study by the M.I.T. Election Data and Science Lab.
Despite Mr. Trump’s frequent false claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, Republicans have made efforts to encourage early voting in this election. In Pennsylvania, the party has pledged more than $10 million to persuade Republicans to vote by mail in November, but as of late September, only about 373,000 Republicans had requested absentee ballots, compared with 881,000 Democrats.
Absentee ballots requested by party
As a percentage of voters registered to a party.
Democrats
Republicans
No party/other
Notes: Data is from states where ballots must be requested and party registration data is reported. Ballot requests are not the same as actual votes.
In the coming weeks, we will also be tracking the number of requested ballots returned to election officials and the percentage of those ballots that are accepted — or rejected — in key states.
Some states passed laws after the 2020 election that will make it harder for voters to cast ballots early in this election. In Georgia, a critical swing state, the Republican legislature and governor passed a sweeping law that decreased the time to request absentee ballots, imposed strict new ID requirements for those ballots and significantly limited the availability of absentee ballot drop boxes.
North Carolina, also considered a toss-up in this election, has added similar restrictions, and it sent absentee ballots to voters two weeks late this year after a court ordered the last-minute removal of Robert F. Kennedy’s name from the ballots.
This page will be regularly updated with the latest data on early voting in each state, and figures may change as new sources of information become available.