Democrats return nearly three times as many mail-in ballots as Republicans in Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania has received more than 2.5 million mail-in and absentee ballots so far, according to new data from election officials here.
That means that 81 percent of state voters who were sent those ballots have returned them. To break it down, more than 1.6 million of those ballots were from registered Democrats, 586,000 were from Republicans, and 278,000 were from independents or third-party voters.
This isn’t surprising or necessarily revealing: Political insiders have expected for months that Democrats would vote disproportionately by mail, while Republicans would vote disproportionately in person.
One stat that is interesting, though, is that 84 percent of registered Democrats who have been sent mail-in or absentee ballots have returned them, compared with 74 percent of Republicans.
When all is said and done, Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth, said she expects to receive as many as 2.6 million mail-in and absentee ballots. A Philadelphia election official estimated that 400,000 such votes would come from the city.
