What Early Voting Can — And Cannot — Tell Us
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I'm Elena Moore. I cover new voters for NPR. That means people who've never voted before, especially young people. Their numbers and power are growing. What issues do they care about? How do they feel? What they say can tell us where this election is headed. My job is to bring their voices to you. To help support our work, sign up for NPR+. Just go to plus.npr.org. Hi. Hi.

Hi, this is Isabel from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I'm about to go on stage to perform in a live shadow cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This podcast was recorded at 1047 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will have survived Frankenfurter's Castle. Have a lovely day. Oh, love that.

It's been a long time. We need more theater, more theater timestamps. Bring them on. And those are fun because you get to like, they're interactive, right? Like Rocky Horror, you get to throw things at the screen. It's like very fun. Throw popcorn, other things like that. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Miles Parks. I also cover voting. And I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover the campaign.

And today on the show, we're going to talk about voting. In-person voting started throughout much of the country last week, which means we can actually start seeing some voting trends start to form. We are, of course, expecting this year to be different than four years ago. I don't have to remind everyone that 2020 was a super weird year. This year, things are very different. So naturally, voting patterns have changed. Miles, why don't you start off by telling us what looks different so far this year compared to four years ago?

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because 2020 more and more is feeling like an outlier in every sense of the word. Right. And we kind of knew that as it was happening, but it is becoming more and more clear as we look at kind of early voting numbers. More than 49 million early votes have now been cast across the country in this election. And I think it's been interesting over the last couple weeks. I don't know about you guys. I've been seeing headlines like every day about like race.

record-shattering early vote in XYZ place. And it's been a little confusing for me to take in because when you actually compare the numbers to 2020...

We're actually way down across the country in terms of early voting. In 2020, at this point in the cycle, according to the AP, there were more than 60 million votes cast. Basically, what's been happening is in a lot of these places, more people are returning to in-person voting as opposed to that mail voting. And so we are seeing record-breaking early in-person turnout in a number of states, particularly

But just to put a ribbon on it, I think it's important to take even a bigger picture look and just note the fact that the country is voting early more broadly than they were 10 or 20 years ago. We are already at this point in the 2024 cycle with a week left of voting that we have more early votes cast in the 2024 election than in

all of 2016 in terms of early voting. And so there is this general trend line towards more early voting. It's just not at the same level as we were in the heart of the pandemic. Yeah, what I think I was seeing was like the first few days of early voting, there was record turnout. And then it sort of tapered off into looking like more like normal rates of early voting, which I guess just says to me that a lot of voters who probably voted by mail in 2020 were people

people who had made their decision probably months ago about who they were going to vote for. They just voted in person this time, right? Yeah, it does seem like that. I was emailing with Charles Stewart, who's like kind of election data wizard over at MIT. And I asked him, like, what do you make of all these headlines and stuff? And his response was,

I think way too much is being made of this, basically because exactly of what you're saying. He just said it seems like these high propensity voters who, you know, would vote any method you give them are just choosing to vote early in person, which is generating these headlines. But it's very, very unclear that it actually is going to mean, you know, an overall turnout bump in twenty twenty four.

It is also a good time to point out that different states have different voting rules, different access to early voting, and have changed things since 2020. So, for example, in Georgia, we actually have a slightly larger overall turnout at this point than we did in 2020, but that's driven by in-person early voting instead of voting by mail. The mail number's way down from 2020. In-person early voting number's way up.

And it's also important to remind people that, you know, what's happening in these states where the election is going to be very close is driving a little bit more of those headlines than what's happening in, say, states that aren't close and that maybe always vote by mail or always have in person. So it's a little bit your mileage may vary when it comes to early voting, but it's

It is clear that there's going to be a little bit of a different picture once all is said and done come next week. Yeah, I do want to take a moment to talk, Miles, about what this means for election workers, because we both talk to people in the election space who always say like early voting, if people can vote in high numbers in early voting, that makes our jobs easier. I wonder if you've heard yet about what these high early voting numbers, especially in the first

bit of early voting means for people who run elections. Yeah, there is this general sense of optimism that there are these big numbers for the early in-person vote, the first few days of early in-person voting in a lot of these states. I was talking recently with the Republican Secretary of State of Kentucky, Michael Adams, who's

who has been spending a lot of time this year trying to get Republicans OK with early voting. As we know, Donald Trump spent a lot of time in 2020 demonizing mail voting and early voting. But there's been a real shift among the Trump campaign and many other notable Republicans who have just kind of given a little bit more of a green light to Republicans to vote early. And it seems like at this point that they're doing that. Here's what Adam said. My biggest focus is

is encouraging the use of early voting which which i brought to kentucky uh my first year and

And I primarily want people to use it so we can avoid crowds and chaos on Tuesday, Election Day. Every day of voting is Election Day. It's all the same. So pick a day that's better for you. It's not just going to lead to a shorter wait time for you. It also is going to make it much easier on the poll workers in the process. So I feel like that's going to be the natural next step here is watching what this means for Tuesday. Hopefully for election workers and for voters, the more early voting there is, there will be less lines on Tuesday. But we'll have to see if that bears out. Yeah.

Well, and Stephen, we already mentioned like this is not like this early voting data is not tea leaves. You're not going to gleam any sort of like information about how this is all going to shake out from what we're seeing. But there are some trend lines, especially in some of these battleground states like Georgia, that like does illustrate how things are changing. And so.

Can you walk us through some of the things you're seeing in Georgia? Yeah. So there has been a lot of discussion online of people trying to divine meeting from microscopic changes in numbers at the county level or the precinct level in multiple states, Georgia included. That's not necessarily a healthy way to spend your time between now and polls closing on Tuesday. Take a walk. But when you look online,

Under the hood of things in Georgia, for example, you can look at the voter history file, which tells you when people voted in previous elections. And by mashing all of that data together, in the first couple days of early voting in Georgia, there was a spike in participation among primarily white Republicans.

rural men and white rural women that voted in Republican primaries and live in majority Republican areas that showed up and voted early in person earlier than they normally do vote early in person. And some people that normally voted on election day have now voted earlier. And so that message of,

show up, swamp the vote, bank your vote, you know, get it done and get it out of the way, really has resonated with Republicans showing up to vote. Now, because this isn't 2020, there were a lot of people that voted by mail, especially Democrats and black voters and young voters, that voted

haven't voted yet because they can't mail it in or put it in a drop box or return it like that, that we are starting to see those numbers pick up of people voting later in 2024 than they did in 2020.

Now, looking at the first couple of days, it made it seem like, ah, there's this groundswell of Republican voting and Democrats aren't voting. And shocker, now that we are getting into the final days and people are procrastinating and finally getting that ballot in, there's a lot more parity. But what this means in Georgia and in other battleground states is that we're not necessarily going to be able to tell as much

about who voted more and who needs to have more people show up on election day until everything is finalized and cast and counted. So put the tea leaves down, put the calculator down, put the Excel spreadsheet down, because everything is a lot different and people have shifted things in the last four years. All right, let's take a quick break. More in a moment.

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And we're back. And Stephen, I wonder what you make of the fact that so many Republicans voted early this time, considering that there has been some sort of like interesting counter messaging through the past few years about voting early, particularly mail-in voting, which is part of the early voting like mix. And, you know, I know Republicans, particularly the Republican National Committee, spent money on things like bank your vote and swamp your vote to sort of

undo that messaging from the Trump campaign. What do you make of all this? I mean, can we say that those campaigns worked? Well, I mean, I think it is the power of messaging. I mean, Trump and Republicans have demonized early voting by mail so much that we're not really seeing that. We've seen laws change and access change. But the concept of showing up and showing up early where there's fewer lines and conversations

kind of banking your vote as sort of a firewall against Democratic voting later is something that's broken through and case in point look at Western North Carolina that was devastated by a hurricane you know they're still having people show up and vote and their voter participation isn't as low as it could have been after the hurricane went through in part because the RNC has been messaging hey

let us help you with recovery. Let us make sure you're okay. And also, here's how you can early vote to make sure that you still have access to the ballot. I think there's also one more kind of optimistic point for election officials on some of this stuff, Ashley, that when we talk about election denial more broadly, I think there's a lot of fears when you look at polling numbers that find that majority of Republican voters don't trust the election system, for instance, right? But I think the fact that

that Trump basically said in 2020, don't vote early and don't vote by mail. The voters followed him. And then once he kind of gave the green light to start doing it, that it seems like a number of Republicans have been OK with that, I think also sheds broader light on this idea that

But what Trump says about the elections more broadly is going to really dictate how people feel about them as opposed to some deep core belief that can't be changed. And so I think there is this kind of malleability about many of these voters when it comes to elections that I think should actually give election workers a lot of hope that these people are not people who you can't bring back into the kind of the trust fold.

And Miles, I mean, one of the things that we've historically told folks to be mindful of, especially on election night, is that Republican votes have historically tallied up quickly because they live mostly in less dense areas and they can tally like the election officials there can tally and submit totals more quickly than bigger cities. Many have maybe heard this called the red mirage. I mean, are we expecting to see the same sort of thing this year?

Election officials that I've talked to are trying to project that as a possibility. I think there is some cautious optimism that because it seems like there's going to be a lot less voting by mail this time around than in 2020, that results in some of these states still could come faster than in 2020. Also, election officials have spent the last four years, right, preparing for this presidential election, and we are not in the middle of a pandemic. But I do think the two states that I'm going to be watching really closely when it comes to this kind of shift

over election night and into the couple of days after are going to be Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, specifically because these are two states where election officials still cannot pre-process absentee ballots. This is doing the work like signature verification and things like flattening ballots to get them prepared to go into scanners. They cannot do that work until on election day. In almost every other state, election officials can do a lot of that nitty gritty preparation work

So that way, mail ballots can be counted really quickly. In those two states, they can't. And so what we may see, because, as we know, Democrats are using mail voting more frequently still than Republicans, you still could see those mail ballots in those two swing states take a little bit longer. So you could see a situation where Republicans look like they're ahead and then the Democratic votes come either later into the night or in the days following. Yeah.

And as an interesting counterpoint in Georgia, because of the changes to election law, we should actually see more of the results quicker in Georgia. One, fewer people will be voting by mail. So even though they can be processed earlier, there are just going to be fewer of those votes to be counted.

But two, with more people voting early in person, those numbers will be reported first. So if there's more Republicans early voting and more Democrats early voting, those will be the first numbers to come in. Georgia also has a law where...

the counties have to report the denominator of the total votes cast on Election Day by 10 p.m. So we should know before going to bed on election night, no matter how late that may be, roughly how many total votes there are in Georgia, even though those won't be counted yet. So this perception of, oh, X candidate was ahead when I went to sleep and I woke up and things changed,

should be tamped down on because things will be able to be counted faster and communicated faster. And in Georgia, at least, the fuller picture should come a lot sooner than in 2020 or years past.

I do think it's important to note, though, on election night, you can expect many Republicans across the country to point the fingers at Pennsylvania and say they really need to be counting their ballots faster, when in reality, it was Republicans in the state legislature in Pennsylvania who declined over the last four years to count their ballots faster.

to take up legislation to fix this problem. Everyone always points at Florida and says, Florida counts their ballots so quickly. They have election results on election night every single time. A big, huge part of that is the fact that they allow pre-processing of absentee ballots for weeks leading up to Election Day. And so the fact that the Pennsylvania legislature was not able to change those rules leading up to this election is going to be why we see some of those delays potentially.

All right. Let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Miles Parks. I also cover voting. And I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover the campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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As Election Day approaches, NPR's Consider This podcast is zooming in on six states that could determine who wins the White House. Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. We'll ask voters in these swing states what matters to them and which way they want the country to go. Follow along with new episodes this week on the Consider This podcast from NPR.