Democrats seem to be losing their grip on mail-in voting as we head toward the 2024 presidential election, according to some revealing new data. This shift should be making Democratic strategists sweat, especially given how much they relied on mail-in voting during the 2020 election. A recent chart put together by Eric Daugherty of Florida’s Voice shows a downward trend in the number of mail-in ballot requests from Democrats in key swing states like Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania compared to the same period in 2020.
For a party that championed mail-in voting as the “safeguard of democracy” just a few years ago, this can’t be good news. According to Daugherty’s data, sourced from Michael Pruser of DecisionDeskHQ and John Couvillon from JMC Analytics, the numbers show Democrats losing ground in this area where they once had a clear advantage. Florida, for example, has seen a stark decline. As of September 2020, Democrats had received over a million requests for mail-in ballots, while Republicans were trailing with just under 900,000. Fast forward to 2024, and those numbers have tanked to a mere 77,077 for Democrats, compared to 48,510 for Republicans.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats are still ahead with mail-in ballot requests, but the gap isn’t as large as it used to be. As of now, Democrats have received over 840,000 requests compared to the GOP’s 347,270. In 2020, Democrats were blowing Republicans out of the water with nearly two million mail-in ballot requests to the GOP’s 772,318. These numbers suggest that while the Democrats are still leading, the days of dominating this method of voting might be slipping away.
North Carolina presents a similar story. Back in 2020, Democrats requested 669,523 absentee ballots, compared to Republicans’ 288,478. However, in 2024, Democrats will have to rely on a “blue wave” to even come close to their previous numbers, according to Daugherty’s interview with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle. The question remains: will the Democrats be able to pull off the same kind of mail-in voting success that propelled them to victory in 2020?
The data from Florida’s Division of Elections also paints a less rosy picture for Democrats. In the 2020 election, they received over 2.1 million mail-in votes, compared to Republicans’ 1.5 million. But with the clear downward trend in ballot requests, it seems like their once-favored method of getting out the vote may no longer be the magic bullet they thought it was.
All this suggests that Republicans may be catching on to the mail-in voting game, while Democrats are seeing their dominance in this area diminish. It will be interesting to see how this trend develops as the election nears, but one thing is clear: Democrats can’t afford to rest on their 2020 mail-in voting laurels.
