The shine is off mail-in voting for Democrats, who are increasingly skeptical that ballots delivered by the U.S. Postal Service will be tallied properly.
Just 15% of Democratic-leaning voters in this year’s elections expect to vote by mail or absentee ballot, according to data from the Pew Research Center. That was a major drop from the 21% who said they used the mail in the 2024 presidential election, the 22% in the 2022 midterm elections, and the 22% in the 2020 presidential election.
Republicans’ interest in voting by mail also fell slightly, to 9%.
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The drop among Democrats was particularly striking given President Trump’s repeated complaints about mail-in voting, which he has suggested leads to fraud both in casting ballots and in the extended counting period that often results from the flood of mail.
Pew said interest in both in-person voting and using mail drop boxes has grown as alternatives to using the Postal Service.
Overall, Pew found a high level of confidence that the election will be conducted properly and that the results will be tallied correctly.
“American voters are generally confident the upcoming midterm elections will be run and administered well, that election workers will handle ballots securely, and that the outcome will be clear after all ballots are counted,” Pew found.
Yet some stark disagreements emerged.
Just 45% of Republicans said states would be able to spot and weed out ballots cast by noncitizens. About 90% of Democrats said the same, Pew found.
The survey was taken in late September and early October, just as the Justice Department was ramping up prosecutions of noncitizens who had voted in past elections, and after Mr. Trump had claimed tens of thousands of them remained on particular states’ voter rolls.
On the other hand, 90% of Republicans said legitimate voters who want to cast ballots would be able to do so without a problem. Just 72% of Democrats said so.
Only about half of voters were confident that the election system was immune to hacking. Democrats were somewhat more worried than Republicans about that threat.
Americans were relatively confident that election results would be known within a day or two of Election Day, with 70% of Democratic supporters and 71% of Republican backers sharing that view.
Republicans’ confidence that the elections will be well-run is higher this year than in the past three elections, according to Pew. Some 73% think this year’s elections will run smoothly, up from 57% in 2024 and just 50% in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Political operatives told The Washington Times that the waning of the pandemic might also explain voters’ shift away from mail-in voting, which soared amid social distancing rules and more permissive policies in 2020.
Doubt is growing over whether mail ballots are being counted properly. Pew found just 64% of Democratic supporters this year are sure mail-in ballots will be correctly tallied, down from 85% in 2024 and 88% in 2022, the last midterm elections.
Among Republicans, that figure was just 42%.
Confidence in in-person voting stood at 81% among Democrats — also down from above 90% in recent elections. Among Republicans, confidence was 84%, higher than in 2022 and 2024 but still down from 92% in 2020.
The Associated Press analyzed early voting turnout this week and reported that some 13 million votes had been cast so far, compared with 9 million at the same point in 2022. That includes both mailed and in-person votes.
States with competitive Senate and gubernatorial races have led the way, with early voting in Texas up 74% compared with 2022 and in Kansas more than doubling. Maine, North Carolina and Ohio have shown increases of at least 30%, the wire service reported.
Mr. Trump, despite publicly criticizing mail-in voting, cast his own ballot by mail during this year’s Florida primary.
In his get-out-the-vote messages, Mr. Trump has been an equal-opportunity booster, telling voters in states where early voting is already underway that “if you have a mail-in ballot, return it immediately, and if not, go vote at the polls right now.”
“Republicans aren’t leaving a single vote on the table,” said Ally Triolo, communications director for the Republican National Committee’s election integrity effort. “With election integrity staff on the ground across 22 battleground states, we’re making sure voters know their options, make a plan, and cast their ballots with confidence.”
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