Troubling signs for the GOP on mail voting

Republicans in 2022 suffered a second straight disappointing election — and a second straight drubbing in mail and absentee voting. So some of their leaders began to push harder for the party to embrace these methods.

Then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) compared the GOP’s pre-Election Day vote deficit to “starting a race where you’re 30 yards behind.” Then-Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel made similar comments. Republicans have since made a concerted effort to convince their voters to vote early.

But it’s always been a tougher sell than it should be, what with Donald Trump frequently deriding these same voting methods as being prone to fraud.

Well, the early evidence is in the 2024 election. And Republicans don’t appear to be heeding the calls of the party’s better mail-voting angels.

As early and mail voting have begun in some states, new polls show Republicans still aren’t planning to embrace these methods. In fact, the partisan gaps look a lot like they did in both 2020 and 2022.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed just 14 percent of Republicans planned to vote by mail or absentee ballot, compared with 34 percent of Democrats.

And surveys from NBC News and YouGov this month each showed 17 percent of Republicans planned to vote by mail, compared with 34 percent and 43 percent of Democrats, respectively.

All three polls show at least a 2-to-1 edge for Democrats in intent to vote by mail. Notably, the gaps (between 17 and 26 points) are similar to what we saw in 2020 and 2022 among voters who cast ballots for each party (26 points and 18 points, respectively, according to data from the Pew Research Center).

When you include early voting — which is more bipartisan — you see that Democrats appear primed to gain a similar pre-Election Day advantage.

The YouGov poll showed Vice President Kamala Harris winning 57-36 among early and mail voters, while the NBC poll showed her winning them 61-35. In 2020, President Joe Biden won about 6 in 10 votes that weren’t cast in person on Election Day.

“Either the margin has to close among [those] voting early, or Republican margins on Election Day have to be bigger” than they currently are, said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, part of the bipartisan team that conducts NBC’s polls.

Even as the percentages look similar to 2020 and 2022, it’s quite possible Democrats won’t bank quite as large an advantage in terms of raw votes. That’s because fewer voters overall are apparently planning to use these methods, as we get further from the height of the coronavirus pandemic that led many states to make it easier to vote by mail and many voters to opt not to vote among the crowds on Election Day.

We’ll also have to see if these numbers are borne out as we begin to get firm data on who is voting early and requesting absentee ballots in key states. (To keep tabs on that, check out the University of Florida’s Election Lab.)

But for now, it doesn’t appear that Republicans’ efforts have worked. And if you wonder why that is, you might want to check out what Trump said just two days ago.

“Now we have this stupid stuff where you can vote 45 days early,” Trump said, adding: “I wonder what the hell happens during that 45?”

Trump then launched into an imagined conversation in which a million votes were moved because someone said an air conditioner had to be fixed.

When you put it like that, is it any wonder Republicans aren’t leaping over themselves to bank their votes early?