Democrats shift voting habits amid Trump war on mail ballots, data finds

President Donald Trump’s unforgiving attacks on mail voting may be impacting how Democrats approach midterm voting. 

Fewer Democrats are requesting absentee ballots, and those who do are sending them in faster, according to a new NBC analysis. 

In three battleground states, data show mail ballot requests are down among Democratic voters. In North Carolina, for example, there’s been a 40% decrease in mail ballot requests since 2022, compared to a 23% decrease in requests from Republicans.

It’s a similar story in Georgia, where heavily Democratic precincts saw a 52% decrease in mail ballot requests, while heavily Republican precincts had a 39% decrease.

And in Pennsylvania, with the highest rate of 2024 mail voters out of the four states polled, fewer Democrats requested mail ballots starting this summer — a period when the fight over Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting was in the headlines.  

Still, there are also signs of Democratic enthusiasm in the data. In Virginia, a state that lets voters join a permanent absentee ballot list, Democratic-leaning precincts have returned 69% more ballots than this time last year, when the state held races for governor and state legislature. Mail ballot requests have stayed on par with recent years, and the state has seen more early in-person votes than in 2024.

NBC’s data is consistent with September polling that found fewer Democrats planned to use mail voting, as well as with what top Democratic election officials have relayed about statewide voter concerns.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) said her state saw a steep decrease in absentee ballot requests immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily lifted a block against Trump’s mail-voting order. The justices eventually ruled to bar the order from being implemented for the midterms.

Trump has spent the latter half of a decade discrediting the voting method used by around 1 in 3 Americans. Most recently, Trump has simultaneously disparaged mail voting while encouraging his supporters to use it.

While Democrats have since sought to assure voters that mail balloting is safe and secure, with some encouraging the method for voters worried about in-person threats to the ballot box, the latest data could suggest mail voting worries, like U.S. Postal Service delays, are taking precedence.