Trumped by Trump? Public Support for Mail Voting in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

How much is support for vote by mail (VBM) impacted by partisan considerations and personal considerations related to the COVID-19 pandemic? Using surveys of registered voters conducted in April and May 2020 designed to assess the support for various electoral reforms, we show that the overall support for expanding VBM in April 2020 falls sharply after just six weeks because Republicans became less worried about catching COVID-19, and unconcerned Republicans became far more opposed to VBM. These differences not only persisted, but actually increased even further between May and Election Day according to a survey done using a different methodology in November 2020. Public support for other reforms that were intended to make voting easier were largely unchanged, however. The pattern of opinion changes we document-perhaps a result of the intense partisan messaging that occurred during the time period of our study-highlights the importance of partisanship and personal considerations for public support for election reforms and also the widespread public support for most proposed reforms.

Who are the Election Skeptics? Evidence from the 2022 Midterm Elections

“…When asked why they are skeptical in open-ended responses, skeptics self-report reasons that are not immutable. The largest source of skepticism is how elections are run (Clinton et al, 2022;Bowler et al, 2015). Specifically, we find the single biggest group is skeptical because of delays in ballot counts: 20.3% of Republican skeptics cite the time to count ballots.…”

Can Addressing Integrity Concerns about Mail Balloting Increase Turnout? Results from a Large-Scale Field Experiment in the 2020 Presidential Election

“…As many states expanded access to mail ballot voting in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, then-President Trump charged that the reform created "tremendous potential for voter fraud," 2 amplifying the considerable partisan disagreement about the prevalence of voter fraud and the extent to which making voting easier opens avenues for it to occur (Levy 2021;Stewart III et al 2016;Wilson and Brewer 2013). Those concerns contributed to a widening gulf between Republicans and Democrats in their views on expanding mail voting, a stark change as mail voting had largely avoided the partisan divisions that exist over other election reforms facilitating ballot access (Bowler and Donovan 2018;Clinton et al 2022;Lockhart et al 2020). Lack of experience with this vote mode and lower confidence among those who cast mail ballots (compared to in-person voters) that their ballots would be counted (Alvarez et al 2021) may have contributed to apprehensiveness about the security and integrity of voting by mail.…”