Poll: Majority plan to vote before Election Day

DENTEO >> A majority of President Donald Trump’s supporters plan to cast their ballot on Election Day, while about half of Joe Biden’s backers plan to vote by mail, a sign of a growing partisan divide over how best to conduct elections in the United States.

Overall, 39% of registered voters say they will vote by mail, well above the 21% who say they normally do so, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The rise is skewed toward backers of the former vice president, 53% of whom plan to vote by mail. Fiftyseven percent of Trump’s supporters say they’ll vote in person on Nov. 3.

Fifty-four percent of voters say they will vote before polls open on Election Day. In 2016, roughly 42% of voters did so.

Trump for months has denigrated mail voting, and Democrats have expressed concern about postal delays that could keep such ballots from being counted. The poll finds ebbing enthusiasm for mail voting: Only 28% of Americans say they would favor their state holding elections exclusively by mail, down from the 40% who said so in April as the coronavirus pandemic was first spreading in the U.S. and before Trump launched his anti-mail campaign.

Support for states allowing voters to cast an absentee ballot without requiring a reason is higher, but also down since April, from 56% to 47%.

Sherry Santiago, 55, of Palm Bay, Florida, is disabled and cannot drive. The Democrat said she almost lost her chance to vote in 2016 because she couldn’t get a lift to the polling place and she’s happy to sign up for a mailin ballot this year.

“I don’t want to take a chance of missing it,” Santiago said of the election. “I have total confidence in voting by mail. I don’t worry there will be a problem.”

But Michelle Harman, 44, a Republican who works in the oil and gas industry in Artesia, New Mexico, plans to vote in person on Election Day.

“This year more than any other, there’s a lot of gray area about what could happen to your vote,” said Harman, who said she didn’t question voting by mail in 2016 when she was out of town.