Five weeks before Election Day, the number of pre-election votes is expected to decline from pandemic-era highs

Election Day is still five weeks away, but voting is already underway across the country, and a CNN review suggests pre-election voting this year will be below 2020’s pandemic-era highs.

As of Tuesday, more than 500,000 votes had already been cast in 27 states for which data was available to provide insight into who was ahead, according to election officials at Edison Research and Catalist, a company that provides data, analysis and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit advocacy groups Vote in November.

That’s a tiny fraction of the roughly 158 million votes cast in the 2020 presidential election.

In the 35 states and the District of Columbia where data is available, voters have so far requested more than 53 million ballots before the election, including in states where all voters receive a ballot by mail. However, according to Catalist data, the number of ballot applications overall is down compared to this time four years ago.

While early election data doesn’t predict final results, it can provide a good picture of “general trends” among voters of different ages, genders and races leading up to the election, Catalist CEO Michael Frias told CNN.

The decline in interest in early voting so far should come as no surprise.

The 2020 election saw historic levels of primary voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some voters had concerns about voting in person because Centers of Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommend social distancing. Four years later, as the country emerges from the pandemic, more voters may be heading back to the polls to vote in person either before or on Election Day.

This shift is reflected in older voters making up a larger share of people requesting ballots so far compared to this point in 2020.

In Georgia, voters ages 65 and older make up 58% of applications, up from 47% in 2020. In Michigan, they make up 53%, up from 41%. In Pennsylvania, voters ages 65 and older make up 49% of ballots requested so far, down from 38% in 2020. And in Wisconsin, 45% of requests came from those voters, down from 34% in 2020. While there were fewer voters across all age groups During While the number of voters requesting ballots so far this year has fallen, the decline among this oldest group of voters has been much smaller.

During the pandemic, postal voting was more widespread across all age groups.

Partisan collapse

While Democrats had a large advantage over Republicans in pre-election voting four years ago, there are early signs that the gap may not be quite as large this year.

In general, Democrats across the country have shown a preference in recent election cycles for voting in advance, while many Republicans choose to vote on Election Day.

But since 2020, Republicans have been trying to convince their supporters to lend their votes early, despite former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud.

In the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, Democrats have requested 62% of all ballots, while Republicans have requested 26%, according to the latest Catalist data. However, at the same point in the 2020 election, Democrats accounted for 65% of all ballot applications, while Republicans accounted for 24%.

There is a similar trend in Florida, once a key battleground state that has become less competitive for Democrats. Democrats accounted for 42% of ballots requested, Catalist’s latest data showed, a slight decline from 44% at the same point in 2020. Republicans accounted for 35% of ballots, up from 33% in 2020, and those with no party affiliation made up 20% of requests, up from 22% in 2020.

Early in-person voting has not yet begun in most parts of the country, and in recent years Republicans have shown they are more inclined to vote early in person than by mail.

While partisan data on early voting is only available in states that allow voters to register by party, data by race is more widely available.

In the key states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the racial distribution of voters requesting ballots is nearly identical to where it was at this point in 2020.

The picture is somewhat different in Florida, where white voters make up a slightly larger share of those requesting ballots before the election compared to this point in 2020 (74% vs. 69%), while Latino voters (13% vs. 16% ) vote Black voters (10% versus 12%) make up a slightly smaller share.

According to Catalist’s Frias, comparing 2024 data to 2020 is no longer as easy as in previous election cycles because early and mail-in voting was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago.

“It will be a relatively normal election, meaning there was no pandemic, there was no outside event that forced people to go indoors and reduce the amount of in-person activities,” Frias said.

However, the data continues to be useful for both the Trump and Harris campaigns, giving them some insight into how successful they have been in reaching key groups of voters so far.

“The campaigns have been reaching voters all year long,” Frias said. “This is the first real opportunity they have to see the people they are talking to.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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