Democrats are far outpacing Republicans in returning mail-in ballots with only weeks until Election Day in Pennsylvania.
According to data from the analytics firm TargetSmart relying on internal company modeling for the partisan affiliation of voters, Democratic voters have returned 73.3 percent of the early ballots completed as of Monday afternoon, with Republicans at just 23.1 percent. The Republican share changed most dramatically when using data showing voters’ registered party, with the GOP down to just 19.4 percent. Pennsylvania implemented no-excuse mail-in voting, meaning any voter could cast a mail-in ballot (distinct in theory but not really in substance from an absentee ballot) without providing authorities a reason, for the first time in 2020, at which point the overall numbers of Pennsylvanians utilizing the option substantially grew. In data relying on voters’ modeled party, Democrats are still, however, over four percent ahead of their share of the total at this point in 2020. In 2018, Republicans led at this stage.
Pennsylvania does not have an option to vote early and in-person. A 2021 proposal to create that option was vetoed by outgoing Democratic Governor Tom Wolf because of potentially suppressive rules also included in the legislative package. The no-excuse mail-in voting system, which state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), the GOP pick for governor, originally supported before later opposing, has been broadly challenged, but in August, the state Supreme Court upheld it ahead of the midterms. The court’s majority opinion held that state legislators were — in contrast to the GOP arguments — appropriately permitted to establish no-excuse mail-in voting. One of the arguments used in state-level contentions over no-excuse mail-in voting, which have stretched across other states, is that it’s distinct from absentee voting and essentially constitutes another form of early voting.
“Though there may be some practical similarities between what is considered absentee voting and what is considered early voting by mail, the two have a different origin and the two have a different genesis,” a member of the Massachusetts attorney general’s team argued. Different concerns are addressed by the two systems. Absentee voting deals with individual cases of voters not going to the polls, while early voting by mail is something in these arguments available for everyone as part of ordinary procedure. Meanwhile, Democrats are also surging in early voting elsewhere. Across nearly a dozen states identified by TargetSmart as Senate battlegrounds, data using voters’ modeled party shows Democratic voters have cast 52.1 percent of the ballots, with Republicans at 39.5 percent. Democrats are still in the lead when using data relying on voters’ registered party, although unaffiliated voters become the largest group overall according to that measurement.
TargetSmart’s other numbers estimate many of those early voters’ partisan leans. The numbers suggest many Republicans are taking the right-wing lies about the integrity of the U.S. electoral process rather seriously and hesitating to vote early. In Pennsylvania, where GOP challenges in court to the new system of mail-in voting potentially threatened millions of ballots cast in the 2020 elections, high-profile races for governor and Senate are going before voters this year. Democrats are faring well in polls for both elections.
Featured image: Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons
