After 2020’s mail-ballot blip, many Americans are embracing in-person voting again
Seven out of 10 voters presented themselves in a polling station in 2024, early or on the ballot, according to a MIT study.
By Jessica Huseman for the voting
After years of speculation on the “death” of the vote in person, the latest national data show a little rebound: the Americans return to the polls in person.
According to a new MIT report entitled “How we voted in 2024” – published exclusively to vote – more than 7 out of 10 voters presented themselves at a polling station, early or the day of the ballot. And although voting habits always move after the pandemic, some clear models emerge.
Voting by mail, which reached 43% of the voting bulletins deposited in 2020, fell to 29% in 2024. It is still greater than 21% seen in 2016 and 13% in 2012, which suggests that home vote remains more popular than it was in the past. At the same time, the vote in person made a return. In 2020, only 31% of voters voted on election day, compared to at least 60% during the previous presidential election years. In 2024, the figure rebounded at 40%. Early vote in person also continued its slow increase, reaching 31% last year.
Together, these trends show that, even if certain habits of the pandemic era stake, many voters return to the polling station – either early or on election, said Charles Stewart, a political scientist who heads the MIT electoral laboratory and wrote the report.
Other things also level. The supporter division on voting by mail is narrowed, said Stewart. “The electoral administration continues to be very protruding to the Republicans,” he said, while the Democrats are “in a way returned to their business”.
What leads to the passage to the vote in person?
The drop in voting by mail was largely motivated by the Democrats who return to the vote in person. In 2020, 60% of Democrats voted by mail; In 2024, this number fell to 37%. Republicans remained less enthusiastic about voting by mail, with 24% using the method in 2024, against 32% in 2020.
Stewart said that the change probably stems from republican messaging. GOP leaders resisted the expansion early and voting by mail during the pandemic, but that changes. The ultimate objective is the participation rate, and the GOP consultants and strategists were “worried about being paralyzed by the Democrats” when it comes to bringing voters to the ballot box, he explained. Although Donald Trump remains skeptical about voting by mail, said Stewart, many Republican political consultants in fact promote early voting, because he allows them to “focus on voters who really need to be delivered to the polling station on the day of the ballot”.
Also notable: even if more people have taken up voting in person, fewer voters had to endure long waiting times. Only 11% of the voters of the public election waited more than 30 minutes, against 14% in 2020. Early voters behaved even better, with only 15% of these waiting times.
Stewart has been studying waiting lines and times for years, and said that he feared that, as the states were starting to offer fewer polls in survey, long waiting times could grow. The fact that the opposite has occurred suggests to Stewart that fewer people vote on election day than in many previous elections, and that the states reduced the number of polling stations accordingly. States like Georgia and South Carolina which once had sadly long lines no longer did it.
New hubs to vote
Public schools, once the archetypal backdrop for photos of the news of the ballot, falls into disgrace as polling stations. In 2024, only 22% of voters voted votes voters in a school, compared to 28% in 2020.
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This change has taken place in many years, partly motivated by security problems and access challenges in schools, especially after COVID, and Increased attention to school safety. The trend could make more difficult to find enough survey sites in certain places that have no other large community spaces.
A quiet return
The return to vote in person has not led to chaos to the polls. On the contrary, voters have largely pointed out positive experiences:
This does not mean that everything went perfectly. Some voters have reported confusion to find polling stations, and there have been more incidents in taking inappropriate photos in the surveys. But overall, voters seemed to love what they saw when they got there.
As we head to the mid-term elections in 2026, these trends deserve to be looked at. The voting infrastructure in person, tense and revised in 2020, is now returned to service. And if the 2024 data is a guide, voters can be very good with that.
