Half of registered voters plan to vote early this fall, new numbers from a September NBC News poll show, with Democrats continuing to gain points among early voters and Republicans enjoying stronger support among those planning to vote in person on Election Day.
Fifty-one percent of voters said they would vote early either by mail or in person, with Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump by 61 percent to 35 percent (a 26-point margin).
By comparison, Trump is ahead by 20 points, 57%-37%, among voters who plan to vote on Election Day, which is 45% of voters in the poll. That’s a smaller lead among a slightly smaller portion of voters than Harris had in these early voters.
“It is necessary to close between the margins [those] early voting, or on Election Day Republican margins have to be bigger than that to win,” said Republican Bill McInturff, who conducted the NBC News poll with Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.
The massive political divergence of early and Election Day voters is the latest evidence of dramatic and lasting change in the Trump years.
In recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls from 2012 and 2016, majorities said they plan to vote on Election Day, rather than early.
Polls showed that Democrats led early voters in both election cycles (then President Barack Obama led early voters by 8 points in 2012 and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 14 points in 2016), and on Election Day in both cases the vote was virtually equal.
The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic led to a massive increase in early and postal voting, with early voters rising to 68% in a late October 2020 poll, with 28% saying they would vote on Election Day.
And with that jump came a big partisan gap — with incoming President Joe Biden leading early voters by 26 points in the poll, while Trump led by 29 points with Election Day voters.
But while the share of voters planning to vote early has declined between late 2020 and now, a major partisan divide remains.
Republicans’ move away from early voting comes after years Inconsistent messages from Trump himself. He was quickly marred by conflicting criticism with repeated comments promoting early voting, questioning the safety of early and mail-in voting with unsubstantiated claims of fraud on social media, in interviews and on the campaign trail.