Mail-in voting has cratered in three key states—signaling boost for Trump

“It’s great news that Republicans are starting to early vote,” Jimmy Keady, founder and president of Republican-aligned JLK Political Strategies, told Fox News. Keady’s remarks are noteworthy given that Decision Desk HQ data has found that requests by Democrats for mail-in ballots in Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania have declined drastically, Fox News reported. According to the data, Democratic requests for mail-in ballots are down by 5 percent in Florida, almost 15 percent in North Carolina, and a whopping 35 percent in Pennsylvania.

Having voters cast ballots early means party election managers can focus on a get-out-the-vote strategy for those who will typically wait until election day to make an electoral decision. “I’m sure voters complain all the time about text messages, about getting mail, about getting robocalls to go vote,” Keady told Fox. “Campaigns are now sophisticated enough that once you go vote, those stop … once a voter goes to vote, and those stop, that allows resource allocation from that voter to another voter.”

Although Florida is now considered to be a red state, Republicans will need every vote to have victories in battleground states North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and having a base of mail-in votes could make the difference.

All of the battleground states remain neck-and-neck races between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris did not experience any bounce from the Sept. 10 presidential debate, and post-debate analysis showed that many believed that ABC News’ moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were biased against Trump.

Pollsters have notoriously undervalued Trump as a candidate and failed to capture actual voting intentions as his polling has sometimes been significantly lower than the electoral results. Additionally, Harris is underperforming both Biden and Hillary Clinton in their respective presidential campaigns against Trump.

Keady believes that early voting could make the difference for Republicans in 2024. “As Republicans, we have to start getting the base to early vote, to do mail-in ballots, to do these things that we know are safe and secure, to get people out to the polls. The Democrats have done this really well, for years.”