Pennsylvania

The 2020 election saw a massive expansion of mail, absentee, and early in person voting. Since then, the question of whether people would continue to cast their vote prior to Election Day has remained open. While some states have rolled back eligibility for mail-in voting, Pennsylvania has continued to allow residents to request no excuse mail-in ballots. We took a look at who voted by mail or absentee ballot in 2020 and 2024.

In the crucial presidential swing state of Pennsylvania, voters have had the opportunity to cast mail-in ballots for over a month. This has produced an evolving body of data on voter decision-making and election performance.

In the leadup to the election, we were interested in two main timeseries: the proportion of all requested ballots that had been cast, and the party breakdown of the voters who had returned their ballots. We examined how those data evolved over the course of more than a month, as well as how they compared to the same statistics an equal number of days before the election in 2020. We noticed several patterns that shed light on both the state of the electorate and how to interpret this essential type of administrative data.

The 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania saw a host of challenges presented by the pandemic coupled with a closely contested election in the state that had implications for nationwide results. Pennsylvania was one of the first states to experience the host of broader nationwide challenges of election skepticism, controversies regarding election administration, and new types of interactions between political parties and election administrators.

In the years between 2020 and 2024, Pennsylvania has been the site of several legal battles with important consequences for the state’s election administration, especially in the realm of voting by mail and other methods that became popular and widespread after the pandemic. Data from the 2024 primary demonstrates Pennsylvania’s continued use of mail-in voting years after the pandemic, while voter registration data reflects changes in the state’s electorate, including the implementation of Automatic Voter Registration (AVR). As election administrators look toward the 2024 general election, this report analyzes some of the administrative and legal issues that will continue to shape the election landscape in Pennsylvania and the nation.