Why an increase in early voting doesn’t mean higher turnout in the midterms: NPR
Election workers remove ballots from a drop box outside the Silver Spring Civic Building voting center on October 22 in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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As of Friday morning, nearly 21 million Americans had already voted in the midterm elections, according to the University of Florida Election Lab, which tracks mail-in and in-person votes.
But early voting numbers can be misleading. An increase in the number of votes cast before Election Day does not necessarily mean more Americans will vote overall.
Indeed, many of those who voted early would have voted on Election Day anyway, according to Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT and founding director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
Stewart said Morning edition that this increase reflects both voter enthusiasm and money spent by campaigns to encourage supporters to vote early.
“It also kind of reflects the large amount of money that’s going into this campaign, which is going into retail politics, going door to door and just making sure that the supporters are energized,” he said.
Stewart also sees changes in how Democrats and Republicans vote. Democrats still have an advantage in mail voting, but that gap is smaller than in 2022 as more Democrats turn to in-person early voting. Republicans’ slight advantage in in-person early voting could also narrow.
What stood out to Stewart was early voting activity in Maine and Iowa, two states that haven’t been major battlegrounds in recent elections. He said the numbers reflect voter enthusiasm and campaign efforts to mobilize supporters in places that haven’t seen as much political activity in recent years.
Speaking with NPR’s A Martinez, Stewart also discussed whether concerns about the United States Postal Service (USPS) and Trump’s opposition to mail-in voting are changing the way Americans vote — and why polls still matter, even if they can’t predict exactly what will happen on Election Day.
Listen to the full interview by clicking the blue button above.
The digital version was edited by Treye Green.
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