Roughly half of Maryland’s electorate plans to avoid the polls for November’s presidential election, using ballot drop boxes or voting by mail instead, according to a Goucher College poll released Thursday.
correction
An earlier version of this article misstated the voter registration deadline in Maryland. The deadline is Oct. 13.
If Goucher’s findings prove true, it would represent a dramatic and historic spike in remote voting in Maryland, where just 5.7 percent of voters requested mail-in ballots in 2016. As of Wednesday, 1,379,541 people had asked for mail-in ballots, a sixfold increase compared to the entire 2016 general election.
The poll also found Democratic nominee Joe Biden (D) with a whopping 31-point lead over President Trump in the deeply Democratic state, which Hillary Clinton carried by 26 percentage points in 2016.
“Given the political demographics of the state, it’s never been a question of whether the Biden-Harris ticket would carry Maryland, but rather by how much,” Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center, said in a statement.
The poll of 776 likely voters surveyed between Sept. 30 and Oct. 4 found their plans for casting ballots diverged dramatically by party: 59 percent of Democrats planned to vote by mail or by drop box, while 72 percent of Republicans intended to make their choices in person, either during early voting or on Election Day. Among unaffiliated voters, 57 percent intended to vote in person, and 43 percent said they would vote by mail.
“There’s a clear partisan undertone to it,” Kromer said.
In the heavily Democratic Washington suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, 59 percent of those surveyed said they would vote by mail, the highest share of any region in the state.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting leads to election fraud, and has suggested he may not accept the results of the November contest. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany later said the president would accept results “of a free and fair election.”
Maryland officials sent mail-in voter applications to every registered voter in the state and have been preparing for about half of voters to cast a ballot by mail. Elections officials secured an emergency regulation change so they could start counting mail-in ballots early — rather than several days after Election Day.
The counting began Monday, with results embargoed until after the polls close on Nov. 3. As of Wednesday, 112,562 ballots had been returned, either to drop boxes or through the U.S. Postal Service.
The Goucher poll also suggests an engaged electorate. Two-thirds said they have been paying “a lot” of attention to the presidential campaigns, and 58 percent said they were “extremely interested” in national elections.
Less than one week remains until Maryland’s Oct. 13 voter registration deadline, although Maryland offers in-person, same-day voter registration during early voting — which starts Oct. 26 — and on Election Day, Nov. 3.
Elections officials are encouraging voters to use mail-in ballots or vote at one of the state’s 81 early voting centers in an effort to avoid crowded polls. In 2016, about 22 percent of voters cast in-person ballots early.
On Election Day, officials will open 321 “vote centers” in lieu of the approximately 1,600 neighborhood precincts that open during a typical election year. Elections officials made the switch to the larger vote center model after thousands of poll workers dropped out because of the coronavirus pandemic, causing a statewide shortage.
The vote centers can process more voters with fewer workers, and a wave of millennials has stepped up to help staff them.
Voters between 35 and 54 were more likely to vote in person, the Goucher poll found, with 61 percent planning on that method. Voters over 55 were equally split between the two options, while 59 percent of voters under 34 said they planned to vote by mail.
The president’s approval ratings in Maryland are low, with 58 percent of all adults and 62 percent of likely voters saying they “strongly disapprove” of how Trump has handled his presidency, and just 39 percent viewing Trump favorably. By contrast, 60 percent viewed Biden favorably.
The poll’s margin of error is 3.5 percentage points.
Scott Clement contributed to this report.
