What the absence of voting in all 50 countries looked like

We may have seen it coming, but now we know for sure: the coronavirus pandemic made the 2020 election look different than any other election in recent memory. As a result of the massive expansion of the postal vote, an incredible number of Americans cast their ballots before election day. And because of then-President Donald Trump’s false claims that the vote by post would lead to election fraud, a large biased gap arose between the ballots cast by mail and the ballot papers on election day.

First, the share of voters who sent out ballot papers was much higher than that of any other recent national election, and the share of voters who went to the polls on election day dropped to its lowest point in at least 30 years. . According to preliminary results from the 2020 survey on the performance of US elections, a poll of 18,200 registered voters led by MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III, 46 percent of 2020 voters voted by post or absent – compared to 21 percent in 2016, which was considered high at the time. Only 28 percent of people voted on election day – less than half of the 60 percent who did so in 2016. Personal early voting also reached a modern high (26 percent), although the change compared to 2016 (when it was 19 percent) was less dramatic.

The shifts also took place across the country. According to the SPAE, 47 states and the District of Columbia saw their postal voting rates rise from 2016 to 2020. The only exceptions were the three states that had held predominantly by-elections for years: Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. And perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest increases in postal voting took place in places that went the furthest to encourage postal voting (i.e., those that automatically sent each registered voter a ballot), especially those with little history of postal voting before 2020 These include New Jersey (where only 7 percent of voters voted in 2016, but 86 percent did 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).

In contrast, the five states that have stuck to the requirement that voters provide a non-pandemic excuse to vote by mail (Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas) have some of the smallest increases. For example, the Texas postal vote rate in 2020 was only 11 percent (barely changed from 7 percent in 2016), while Mississippi’s was only 10 percent (just slightly higher than the 4 percent in 2016).

The week of the election gave us a clear illustration of how blue absent votes were and how red voting day of election day was. (You will recall that the initial results of states that counted first absent votes, such as North Carolina, were too rosy for President Biden, and that states that personally counted first votes, such as Pennsylvania, were deceptively favorable to Trump.) But Over the past month, FiveThirtyEight has been collecting data on the bias of absentee ballots and election day of state election officials – and the numbers are striking.

We have data for only 15 of the 50 states, but it tells a consistent story: Biden won the absentee vote in 14 of the 15 states (all except Texas), and Trump won the election day in 14 of the 15 states as well. (all except Connecticut).

Trump has indeed won the personal vote, even in deep-blue states like Hawaii (by 71 percent to 27 percent). He even won the election day vote in Biden’s home state of Delaware, although it was very close there (49.25 percent for Trump versus 49.19 percent for Biden). Conversely, Biden won the absent vote, even in trusted red states like Arkansas (61 percent to 37 percent) and South Carolina (60 percent to 39 percent). If we had data for all 50 states, we would probably see that Trump would win the election day in almost everyone and Biden would win the almost everyone in the absent vote.

At the very least, the magnitude of this gap would have shocked anyone looking at the same data for 2016. Of these 15 states, 11 also aborted the outcome of the 2016 presidential election through a voting method. And although the absentee votes in 2016 were consistently more democratic than the election day votes (just as in 2020), the average gap between them was much smaller than in 2020 – only 14 points in 2016 compared to 65 points in 2020.

Put another way: In 2016, several states had insignificant differences between the absentee and the voting day of election day, but in 2020, even the smallest differences were gaping gaps. For example, in Alaska (where Trump won absenteeism by 15 points in 2016 and 17 by-elections), the absentee vote in 2020 was Biden + 19 and the day of election day Trump + 36. And in Georgia (where Trump in 2016 absent with Won 2 points and polls by 6), were absent in 2020 Biden + 30 and voting day’s election Trump + 23.

It’s not hard to see why Trump then, in his desperation to stay in power, claimed that Democrats used postal votes to steal his election. Biden would indeed not have won without postal votes, but there is no evidence that a significant number of these votes were fraudulently cast. The increase in its use was rather a response to the pandemic – one that was encouraged even by most election officials – and the fact that these votes were so democratic is most likely due to Trump himself. By questioning the security of postal votes, he made sure that most of his constituents would, according to traditional methods, cast their votes and leave the pool of absent ballot papers strikingly – but not surprisingly – blue. (Combined with the legitimate efforts of Republicans to throw out entire groups of absentee ballots, it may even have been a deliberate strategy to improve Trump’s chances by denying Democratic voters.)

As a result, it will be interesting to see if these sudden changes around the mood of the post are a new norm or just a lightning strike in history. Some states are considering making their extension of the ballot box permanent by post, while other states have shown little interest – others are even considering introducing bills. restrict absent voice. But since postal voting can make life easier for campaign operators, we can expect more Republicans to accept it once Trump is no longer president; then it may depend on how much influence he exerts forward in the IDP. According to the SPAE, 65 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans who voted by mail in 2020 said they would “most likely” vote by mail again (although, of course, not entirely theirs). So, maybe postal voting will be popular among members of both parties, but with an even greater separation between them.