Mail-in voting became much more common in 2020 primaries as COVID-19 spread
Mail-in ballots accounted for just over half of this year’s primary votes cast in the 37 states (plus D.C.) for which data is available.
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Mail-in ballots accounted for just over half of this year’s primary votes cast in the 37 states (plus D.C.) for which data is available.
After months of campaigning, debating, polling and fundraising, Democratic presidential candidates face their first real-world test Feb. 3.
On election night 2018, besides the exit polls there will be an additional source of data on who voted and why, developed by The Associated Press, Fox News and NORC at the University of Chicago and based on a very different methodology. That means that depending on where you go for election news, you may get a somewhat different portrait of this year’s electorate.
Many of the millions of Americans voting in Tuesday’s midterm elections will have to do so while working around the demands of their jobs – hitting their polling places before work, taking an extra-long lunch break or going afterward and hoping to make it before the polls close. As they stand in line, many of them may wonder why it is that the United States votes on a Tuesday, of all days.
Turnout in this year’s primaries for Congress and most state governorships surged compared with the last midterms in 2014, particularly among Democrats. Nearly a fifth (19.6%) of registered voters – about 37 million – cast ballots in primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives – a 56% increase over the 23.7 million who voted in 2014’s House primaries. Turnout that year was 13.7% of registered voters.
Read a Q&A with Pew Research Center’s Ruth Igielnik and Scott Keeter about a recent study about voter files.
For the fifth time in U.S. history, and the second time this century, a presidential candidate has won the White House while losing the popular vote.
The great majority of Americans who vote on Election Day will use one of two basic technologies: “fill-in-the-bubble” and other optical-scan ballots, or touch-screen computers and other direct recording electronic systems.
The firm that runs the presidential exit poll expects to interview about 100,000 voters across the country by the time the polls close on election night.
Though many Americans say they’re concerned about possible election fraud, the U.S. electoral system generally ranks high in cross-national comparisons.
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