Majority of Voters Used Nontraditional Methods to Cast Ballots in 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a variety of changes in voting methods across the country in 2020, and the ways people could cast ballots varied widely from state to state.

Many states maintained traditional voting procedures, but some expanded early voting, and others automatically sent all registered voters a ballot that could be returned by mail.

In the 2020 election, 69% of voters nationwide cast their ballot nontraditionally — by mail and/or before Election Day.

New data from the Current Population Survey's November 2020 Voting and Registration Supplement released today show us in detail the ways voters cast their ballot at the national and state levels and allow us to compare voting methods and voter turnout across elections. Since these estimates are derived from survey responses, they differ from official reports from each state and estimates from other data sources.

In the 2020 election, 69% of voters nationwide cast their ballot nontraditionally — by mail and/or before Election Day. This is the highest rate of nontraditional voting for a presidential election (Figure 1) since questions regarding voting method have been included in the survey.

By comparison, about 40% of voters cast their ballots by mail and/or prior to Election Day in 2016.

Much of the surge in nontraditional voting was due to an increase in mail-in voting.

In 2020, 43% of voters cast ballots by mail and another 26% voted in person before Election Day. In 2016, 21% mailed in their ballots and 19% voted in person prior to Election Day.

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