After years of begging voters not to cast ballots early or through mail for fear of unfounded voter fraud, Donald Trump has changed his tune on early voting, with his campaign now telling supporters to head to the polls before Election Day.
“I need you to vote, and I need you to go to the polls before Election Day because they will try on Election Day to keep you home,” Trump told North Carolina voters on Monday.
Republican voters have appeared to respond. Early voting among registered Republicans has ballooned, particularly in pivotal swing states. In Nevada, where Biden won in 2020 by a margin of 33,500 votes, 1,000 more Republicans than Democrats have voted early this year. In North Carolina, Democrats lead early voting by just 1%. Last year at this time, they led by more than 30% of the early voting ballots cast.
With polling in a dead heat between Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris—with Trump beginning to eke ahead—early voting has become a valuable, yet dubiously reliable metric to try and ascertain the favored candidate ahead of Nov 5. According to longtime political journalist Mark Halperin, early voting is of such consequence that if the rate of Republican early voting continues at its current pace, Trump would win the election.
But for a party that has historically opposed early voting and voting by mail and absentee ballots, why are Republicans now turning out in droves to their polling places in October? Experts say it’s not just Trump’s changing narratives on early voting, it’s also a changing Republican party.
Trump’s transforming narrative
Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump was vehemently opposed to early and mail-in voting. His view reflected that of Republicans, who have for decades opposed non-traditional voting measures, spinning the unfounded narrative that more ample voting opportunities compromise election security.
“Because of the new and unprecedented massive amount of unsolicited ballots which will be sent to ‘voters’, or wherever, this year, the Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED, which is what some want,” Trump wrote on Twitter in September 2020.
Because of the new and unprecedented massive amount of unsolicited ballots which will be sent to “voters”, or wherever, this year, the Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED, which is what some want. Another election disaster yesterday. Stop Ballot Madness! https://t.co/3SMAk9TC1a
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2020
But the disruptions of the pandemic made early voting ubiquitous, and Democrats—who have embraced early and mail-in voting as part of their platform, historically advocating for civil rights and fewer voting barriers—benefitted. By mid-October 2020, Democrats had an 18% lead over Republicans among 1.1 million “sporadic” voters who voted early, according to Democratic data firm TargetSmart.
Michael Traugott, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Michigan, said having seen the Democrat’s success with early voting in 2020, Trump was more willing to depart from his party’s stance eschewing the practice.
“Donald Trump is not an experienced policy maker or politician with a set of consistent, logical, constrained opinions,” he told Fortune. “I think initially he adopted what he thought was the party’s position—which opposed early voting—and then he or the people advising him saw the number of votes that were being cast by Democrats, and they realized they were at a disadvantage.”
To be sure, Trump’s change of stance on early voting doesn’t necessarily mean a fundamental shift in Republican belief on early voting, Traugott said. With the practice becoming more common after COVID, more voters, regardless of party, may just be more comfortable with early voting.
“It’s a little surprising it took the Republicans—individual Republicans, if not the party—[a while] to realize the advantages of early voting and convenience, but now they’re catching up,” he said.
Changing Republican demographics
But beyond changing attitudes toward early voting, Republican demographics are shifting toward the racial and socioeconomic makeup of Democratic voters in past elections, who have favored early voting.
The U.S. electorate has increasingly diversified, with more Asian American voters aligning with Democrats, and more Hispanic voters favoring Republicans. Over the past decade, working-class and blue-collar Americans have begun more dramatically shifting red, while white, college-educated voters skew blue. For the emerging blue-collar Republicans, for whom remote work may not be readily available, early voting is suddenly not just appealing, but practical, Traugott suggested.
“These are people who work regular hours, sometimes long hours,” he said. “Being able to vote at home, at the kitchen table, or in the living room, and to have a couple of weeks to do it is just meaningful in the convenience sense to them.”
But there’s still one massive unknown about early voting that won’t be revealed until deep into the night of Nov. 5, Traugott said. Just because an individual is registered as a Republican doesn’t translate to a vote for Trump, particularly as traditionally Democratic demographics shift red and as many registered Republicans pledge to vote for Harris.
“What we’re seeing primarily is the tabulation of returns by registration status,” Traugott said. “It doesn’t mean that every Democratic ballot is being cast for Kamala Harris or every Republican ballot is being cast for Donald Trump.”
