The effects of age and party on voters' decisions to vote-by-mail or in-person during the pandemic

What is it about?

During the pandemic and the 2020 election how people were going to vote, in-person or by mail, became an important issue. Democrats encouraged mail balloting, but President Trump raised questions about the reliability and safety of mail balloting, raising the specter of potential mischief and fraud. The CDC encouraged voters to especially vote early to space out voting or to vote by mail to limit contact with other voters and those who might transmit COVID-19. This led to a party factor in voting, which led more Democrats than Republicans to choose vote by mail. Republicans on the other hand were more likely to vote in-person early compared to Democrats . We also saw a large age factor, which was correlated with COVID-19 illness and death. Older voters regardless of age were more likely to vote by mail than younger voters.

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Why is it important?

Vote by mail was not polarized before 2020 nationally. This likely affects voter confidence and beliefs in legitimacy of the outcome of the election. It will also likely influence voter mode choices for future elections. We also use administrative data to test our models providing us the universe of voters to work with and giving us reliable and generalizable results.

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