We may have predicted it, but now we know for sure: the coronavirus pandemic made the 2020 elections different from any other election in recent memory. Due to the massive expansion of postal voting, an impressive number of Americans voted before election day. And due to false claims by then President Donald Trump that voting by post would lead to electoral fraud, a huge party gap has emerged between votes cast by post and those voted on election day.
First, the share of voters who voted by mail far exceeded that of any other recent national election, and the share of voters who reported going to a polling place on election day dropped to its lowest point by at least 30 years. According to preliminary findings from the 2020 American Election Performance Survey, a survey of 18,200 registered voters conducted by MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III, 46 percent of 2020 voters voted by post or absent – against 21 percent in 2016, which over time was considered high. Only 28 percent of people reported having voted on election day – less than half of the 60 percent who did in 2016. Early voting in person also reached a modern high (26 percent), although the 2016 change (when was 19 percent) was less dramatic.
Changes have taken place across the country as well. According to the SPAE, 47 states and the District of Columbia saw their postal vote rates rise from 2016 to 2020. The only exceptions were the three states that held predominantly postal elections for years: Colorado, Oregon and Washington. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest spikes in postal voting occurred in places that went the extra mile to encourage postal voting (that is, those who automatically sent a ballot to all registered voters), especially those with little voting history. by mail before 2020. This includes New Jersey (where only 7 percent of voters voted by mail in 2016, but 86 percent did so in 2020), the District of Columbia (12 percent in 2016 versus 70 percent in 2020 ) and Vermont (17 percent in 2016 versus 72 percent in 2020).
On the other hand, the five states that adhered to the requirement that voters provide an unrelated pandemic excuse for voting by mail (Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas) had some of the smallest increases. For example, Texas’ postal voting rate in 2020 was just 11 percent (barely changed from 7 percent in 2016), while Mississippi’s was just 10 percent (just slightly more than 4 percent percent in 2016).
Election week has already given us a vivid illustration of how blue absent votes and red election day votes. (You must remember that the initial results of states that counted absent votes first, such as North Carolina, were overly optimistic for President Biden, and states that counted personal votes first, such as Pennsylvania, were deceptively favorable To Trump.) Over the past month, FiveThirtyEight collected data on absenteeism partisanship and election day votes from state election officials – and the numbers are staggering.
We have data for only 15 of the 50 states, but they tell a consistent story: Biden won the absentee vote in 14 of the 15 states (all but Texas), and Trump won the election day vote in 14 of the 15 as well (all minus Connecticut).
In fact, Trump won the vote in person, even in dark blue states like Hawaii (by 71% to 27%). He even won the election day vote in the home state of Biden, Delaware, although he was extremely close there (49.25% for Trump versus 49.19% for Biden). On the other hand, Biden won the absent vote, even in trusted states like Arkansas (61% to 37%) and South Carolina (60% to 39%). If we had data for all 50 states, we would probably see Trump winning the election day vote in almost all of them and Biden winning the missing vote in almost all of them.
Absentee votes broke blue, election day votes red
How absentee and election day votes in the 2020 presidential election were divided by candidate in the 15 states, following the results by the voting method
| Absent | Election day | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| state | Biden | Trump | Margin | Biden | Trump | Margin | Gap = Go |
| Pennsylvania | 76% | 23% | D + 54 | 34% | 65% | R + 32 | 85pt |
| Maryland | 81 | 17 | D + 65 | 39 | 57 | R + 18 | 83 |
| Hawaii † | 66 | 32 | D + 33 | 27 | 71 | R + 44 | 77 |
| North Caroline | 70 | 28 | D + 42 | 33 | 65 | R + 32 | 75 |
| Rhode Island | 79 | 19 | D + 60 | 44 | 54 | R + 10 | 70 |
| Arkansas | 61 | 37 | D + 24 | 26 | 70 | R + 43 | 67 |
| Oklahoma | 58 | 40 | D + 18 | 26 | 72 | R + 46 | 65 |
| Delaware | 79 | 20 | D + 59 | 49 | 49 | UP UNTIL | 59 |
| Iowa | 57 | 41 | D + 16 | 27 | 70 | R + 43 | 59 |
| South Carolina | 60 | 39 | D + 21 | 31 | 67 | R + 35 | 57 |
| Connecticut | 77 | 22 | D + 56 | 49 | 49 | UP UNTIL | 55 |
| Alaska | 58 | 39 | D + 19 | 30 | 66 | R + 36 | 54 |
| Georgia | 65 | 34 | D + 30 | 38 | 60 | R + 23 | 53 |
| Arizona * | 52 | 47 | D + 5 | 32 | 66 | R + 34 | 38 |
| Texas * | 48 | 51 | R + 3 | 39 | 59 | R + 20 | 17 |
At the very least, the magnitude of this division would have shocked anyone who looked at the same data for 2016. Of those 15 states, 11 also discriminated against the results of the 2016 presidential election by the voting method. And although absent votes in 2016 were consistently more democratic than on election day (as in 2020), the average difference between them was much smaller than in 2020 – only 14 points in 2016 compared to 65 points in 2020.
In 2016, there was not a lot of gap in the way people voted
As absentee and election day votes in the 2016 presidential election were divided by candidate in the 11 states, following the results by the voting method
| Absent | Election day | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| state | Clinton | Trump | Margin | Clinton | Trump | Margin | Gap = Go |
| Iowa | 52% | 42% | D + 10 | 35% | 57% | R + 22 | 32pt |
| Maryland | 69 | 25 | D + 44 | 54 | 39 | D + 15 | 30 |
| South Carolina | 48 | 49 | UP UNTIL | 38 | 57 | R + 19 | 18 |
| North Caroline | 46 | 49 | R + 3 | 39 | 55 | R + 16 | 13 |
| Rhode Island | 60 | 33 | D + 27 | 54 | 39 | D + 14 | 12 |
| Hawaii | 66 | 27 | D + 38 | 59 | 33 | D + 26 | 12 |
| Oklahoma | 34 | 60 | R + 26 | 28 | 66 | R + 38 | 12 |
| Arkansas | 39 | 56 | R + 17 | 32 | 61 | R + 29 | 12 |
| Delaware | 56 | 40 | D + 16 | 53 | 42 | D + 11 | 5 |
| Georgia | 47 | 49 | R + 2 | 45 | 51 | R + 6 | 4 |
| Alaska | 37 | 52 | R + 15 | 35 | 52 | R + 17 | two |
In other words: in 2016, several states had insignificant differences between absentee votes and election day votes, but in 2020, even the smallest differences were gaps. For example, in Alaska (where in 2016 Trump won absentees by 15 points and votes on election day by 17), absentee votes in 2020 were Biden + 19 and election day votes were Trump + 36. And in Georgia (where in 2016 Trump won absentees by 2 points and votes on election day by 6), those absent in 2020 were Biden + 30 and votes on election day were Trump + 23.
It’s not hard to see why Trump, then, in his desperation to stay in power, claimed that Democrats used ballots in the mail to steal his election. In fact, Biden would not have won without the votes in the mail, but there is no evidence that a significant number of those votes were cast fraudulently. Instead, the increase in its use was a response to the pandemic – which was even encouraged by most election officials – and the fact that these votes were so Democratic is most likely due to Trump himself. By casting doubts about the security of ballot papers, he practically ensured that the majority of his voters would vote using traditional methods, leaving the absent vote pool surprisingly – but not surprisingly – blue. (Combined with Republicans’ legal efforts to reject entire batches of missing ballots, this may even have been a deliberate strategy to improve Trump’s chances by depriving Democratic voters.)
As a result, it will be interesting to see whether these sudden changes around postal voting represent a new normal or prove to be just a speck in history. Some states are considering making their postal vote expansions permanent, while others have shown little interest – others are still considering bills to restrict absent vote. But given that postal voting can make life easier for campaign operatives, we can expect more Republicans to adopt it now that Trump is no longer president; so again, it may depend on how much influence he has on the GOP going forward. According to the SPAE, 65% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans who voted by mail in 2020 said they “most likely” would vote by mail again (although, of course, that is not entirely up to them). Therefore, perhaps postal voting will retain some popularity among members of both parties, but with an even greater division between them.