- Democrats continued to dominate mail-in ballot voting in Pennsylvania, state data shows
- Republicans have preferred to vote in person since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump raised unfounded security claims about mail-in ballots
- GOP leaders have worked to reverse the trend, saying the gap has aided Democrats in winning recent elections for president and Congress
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Despite recent efforts by Republican Party leaders to get their supporters to embrace mail-in voting, conservatives continue to lag far behind Democrats in using mail-in ballots.
Of the more than 931,000 mail-in ballots Pennsylvania counties have or will send out for the municipal elections, just 19.4% will go to registered Republicans, according to records released by the Department of State on Wednesday. By comparison, 72.1% of the ballots will go to registered Democrats with the remaining 8.4% being delivered to independent or third-party voters.
Those figures were in near lockstep with mail-in ballot requests in the Lehigh Valley.
In Lehigh County, 25,384 voters were approved for mail-in ballots this November, data showed. Some 71.4% of these requests came from Democratic voters. Meanwhile, Republicans accounted for 19.2% of ballot requests with independents and third-party voters making the remaining 9.3%.
Meanwhile, Northampton County approved 28,728 requests for mail-in ballots by Tuesday's deadline. Of these, 70.9% were made by registered Democrats, 18.7% came from registered Republicans with the remaining 10.2% coming from independents and third-part voters.
Republicans at the national and local levels have publicly recognized they need to close the mail-in ballot gap if they want to win competitive races. Mail-in voting tends to be more convenient than waiting in line at a polling place, making it easier for low-propensity voters — people who infrequently cast a ballot — to participate in the electoral process.
This June, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel launched the Bank Your Vote campaign, a national movement to persuade conservative voters to embrace mail-in ballots. Similarly, Dean Browning and Lisa Scheller, former rivals in Lehigh County Republican circles, teamed up to create the Win Again PAC to encourage low-propensity conservative voters to vote by mail this spring.
Both groups preached the same message — even small increases in the number of conservatives voting by mail could pay huge dividends for Republicans. Since mail-in ballots became legal, Democrats have won highly contested races for president, the U.S. House and U.S. Senate by small margins. Cutting into the Democratic advantage in any of those races could have been enough to flip the outcomes, political strategists said.
It's been tough going. Then-President Donald Trump eroded trust in mail-in ballots ahead of the 2020 election, raising baseless claims about their security. Many of the conservative candidates who followed his example, including 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, have hit similar notes.
Last year, Republicans accounted for 21% of mail-in ballots in Lehigh County and 12.7% of the mail-in ballots in Northampton County, according to the county election offices.
A total of 58,490 ballots were requested in the Lehigh Valley this November, far fewer than the 82,677 sent out for Election Day 2022. Turnout for local elections tends to plummet for local races compared to the federal elections when presidents, U.S. senators and members of Congress are elected.
