Poll: Half of voters plan to cast their ballots early — with a stark partisan divide

Americans are more eager to vote early than they were before the pandemic, but a deep partisan divide on early voting remains, the latest national NBC News poll shows.

With not even a month to go before Election Day, 5% of registered voters said they had already cast their ballots (3% by mail and 2% in person), according to the new poll, which surveyed people between Oct. 4-8.

Another 47% said they plan to vote early (20% by mail and 27% in person).

Overall, 52% of voters said they’re planning to cast their ballots early this year, with 44% planning to vote in person on Election Day. That’s roughly in line with NBC News poll results from a similar point in the 2022 midterm elections, when 49% of voters said they planned to vote early and 47% planned to vote on Election Day.

Meanwhile, 3% said they aren’t sure which method they will use to vote and 1% said they won’t vote.

But the latest survey results represent a dip from the 2020 election, which took place amid the throes of the Covid pandemic, when by early October, 59% of respondents said they planned to vote early and 37% planned to wait to vote on Election Day. (By late October, the share of people saying they’d vote early had risen to 68%.)

The new numbers are also significantly higher than the 41% who said they planned to vote early in early November 2016, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll at the time, although fewer states offered early voting at a comparable time.

The partisan divide between those voting early and on Election Day remains stark, after years of former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies attacking the legitimacy of early voting.

Vice President Kamala Harris has a 17-point lead among those who plan to vote before Election Day or have already voted (57% to 40%), with a massive lead over those planning to vote by mail and a narrow edge over early in-person voters.

Trump leads among those planning to vote on Election Day by a 21-point margin, 58% to 37%.

The NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters, 898 of whom were reached by cellphone, was conducted Oct. 4-8. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.