Pennsylvania Democrats say they are optimistic after leading in early voting for women, seniors

Women and seniors are breaking for Democrats in Pennsylvania’s early voting returns, a split that has led some party leaders to rejoice, even as others temper their enthusiasm.

More than 1.6 million commonwealth voters have cast early mail-in ballots for the Nov. 5 presidential election. An Inquirer analysis of early ballot returns found that women composed 56% of the early mail-ins, with men trailing at 43%, according to voting data obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of State this week.

Democrats have historically had an edge with mail voting, and while that lead has narrowed this year as Republicans have increasingly embraced the balloting method, women who are registered as Democrats still were responsible for the largest single share of early votes.

The partisan split was even higher among senior voters: Out of 716,000 early voters over age 65, nearly 59% were registered Democrats.

The early returns come with big caveats: About 300,000 mail-in ballots were returned by voters who didn’t list their gender on voter registration forms. And, of course, it’s hard to predict how independents will vote, or how in-person turnout will break on Election Day.

Still, early news of the gender divide is a shot of hope for Democrats amid polls showing a neck-and-neck race, viewing women voters as a key for Vice President Kamala Harris to claim Pennsylvania next week.

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“Every woman is not going to have on a Kamala T-shirt or have her kids dressed up as Kamala for Halloween,” said State Rep. Joanna McClinton, a Democratic leader and the first woman to lead the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, “but the return rates are very significant and show just how much enthusiasm there is.”

Sarah Niebler, an associate professor of political science at Dickinson College, cautioned against reading too much into a gender divide that tracks with past electoral trends.

“We know that women are more likely to be Democrats, and Democrats are more likely to request mail-in ballots,” she said, adding that 1988 was the last time that women voted at a higher percentage for the Republican presidential candidate than the Democratic candidate.

Women are also leading turnout among both major parties, with Republican women narrowly outpacing men as of this week.

Stephanie Sharp, a cofounder of Women4U.S., a PAC that has focused on getting Republican women in swing states to vote for Harris, noted that early voting has become an important tool for women who may also be balancing jobs and families.

“Advance voting makes it easy to check ‘practicing democracy’ off the list and get to work, community, and family lists,” she said.

Between 2016 and 2020, Trump did make inroads with women voters, growing his vote share from 39% to 44% nationwide. But those efforts were likely to be complicated by the aftereffects of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022 — which returned questions about abortion access to the states. The ensuing abortion bans coincided with the worst midterm election performance for Republicans in generations.

“For younger women especially, it’s closely linked to issues like abortion access and the Dobbs decision,” Neibler said. “Women were reported as voting 15 to 20 points against Trump, in some polling.”

Republicans’ hopes, meanwhile, hinge on narrowing Democrats’ overall advantage in early voting. GOP voters are increasingly taking advantage of in-person mail voting options, overwhelming election offices across the state as voters waited in long lines to cast their mail ballot.

Those efforts seem to be paying off. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, left-leaning voters heavily preferred voting by mail versus in person. Out of 2.6 million returned ballots, 1.7 million — nearly 65% — came from Democrats. In 2022, that figure rose to 70%.

But, as of Thursday, Democrats’ share had dropped below 57%.

» READ MORE: It’s been 298 years and counting since a woman led Pa. Will that matter in the election?

Niebler said the decline was linked to the effective end of the pandemic era, as well as local Republicans vocally encouraging participation in early voting — while still working against years of messaging from Trump that mail ballots had figured into unfounded claims of election rigging.

“Trump is still messaging that they were linked to fraud,” she said. “The messaging is still dominant. He’s started to talk a little bit more about voting by mail being OK, but it’s going to take a while for that to go away.”

But early ballot returns are also concentrated around densely populated urban centers.

Robert Speel, associate professor of political science at Penn State Behrend, in Erie, noted that most counties in the state do not have multiple satellite election offices like Philadelphia and its collar counties, which make it easier to cast mail ballots ahead of Nov. 5.

“It’s definitely too early to tell,” he said of the mail-ballot data. “What you’re getting from early voting numbers is coming from Philly and collar counties and that might not represent the rest of the state.”