President Trump has spent months making specious claims about voting by mail, but they seem to be having an impact: a new poll finds that Republican voters in Maryland are much more likely to vote in person than Democrats.
The poll from Goucher College found that the decision on how Marylanders will vote this year is relatively evenly split between those preferring by mail (48%) and those opting for in-person (51%). But there’s also a distinct partisan breakdown. Of those choosing to vote by mail, 59% are Democrats, while of those opting to cast their ballot in person, 72% are Republicans.
The poll of 776 likely voters conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 4 also found Vice President Joe Biden with a wide lead over Trump, 61-30.
While the poll does show that the decision to vote by mail does correlate with political ideology, age and level of education (progressives, younger voters, and voters with college degrees are more likely to choose mail than in-person voting), it doesn’t follow specific race lines. A majority of both white and Black voters prefer voting in person to voting by mail.
As of this week, almost 1.4 million Maryland voters have requested mail ballots, six times the number requested during the 2016 presidential election. More than half-a-million of those requests have come from Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, the state’s most populous areas. The poll shows that 59% of voters in the two counties say they will vote by mail.
Data released on Thursday by the Maryland State Board of Elections shows that almost 150,000 mail ballots have already been returned for counting, with Montgomery and Prince George’s counties accounting for just over 25,000 of those.
Every voter in D.C. has been sent a mail ballot, while in Virginia voters can request absentee ballots or vote early, which started on Sept. 18 and runs through the end of October. In Maryland, early voting starts Oct. 26 at 80 centers across the state. On Election Day, in-person voting will happen at 300 consolidated vote centers. Voters who choose to vote by mail can return their ballot through the mail, or leave it at a ballot drop box.
The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 13, and to request a mail ballot Oct. 20.
Martin Austermuhle