Six days before the election, mail ballots are down — except for Republicans

The number of mail ballots in Pennsylvania returned six days before the election is down compared with 2020 — except for Republicans.

With COVID-19 no longer considered a public health emergency, Pennsylvania is seeing dramatically fewer mail ballot requests this year than the last presidential election. At this point in 2020, 2,117,300 mail ballots had been returned across the state, compared with 1,550,128 that have now been returned.

But as mail voting has overall become less popular in the state, it has become more popular for Republicans. Former President Donald Trump and his allies like Elon Musk have been encouraging voters to cast ballots by mail after Trump fearmongered about the practice and severely diminished trust in the process in 2020.

There is a 27% decrease in mail ballots that have been returned at this point in Pennsylvania compared with the 2020 presidential election. For Democrats, that decrease is 39%. But Republicans have shown a 10% increase in returned ballots across the state compared with 2020, and 5% in Philadelphia alone.

But Democrats still vote by mail in higher numbers in the state, with nearly 57%, or 881,779 returned ballots, from Democrats and a little over 32%, or 501,736, from registered Republicans. Democrats have sent back over 380,000 more mail ballots than Republicans across the state, and the partisan difference is 114,000 ballots in Philadelphia alone.

And with Democrats voting by mail in higher numbers than Republicans in Pennsylvania, the results of the mail ballots can be skewed, creating artificial swings on election night.

The majority of mail ballots have already been returned.

As of Wednesday, more than 1.5 million mail ballots have been returned in Pennsylvania — that’s nearly 71% of approved mail ballot applications in the state.

In Philadelphia, nearly 65% of mail ballots have been returned, which is 153,481 ballots, and more than 82% of those, or 126,592, are from registered Democrats.

The partisan split is less stark in the Philadelphia suburbs, with 58% of returned ballots being from Democrats and 29% being from Republicans, compared with a 66%-21% split in 2020.