Mail-in voting backed by most Americans despite Trump push to end it
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More than half of Americans supported allowing no-excuse mail-in voting in a Pew Research Center poll despite President Trump's promise to end the practice he denounced as "fraudulent."
The big picture: Trump has been pushing an end to mail-in voting for years, especially while calling into question results of the 2020 election, in which election officials found no evidence of widespread voting fraud.
The latest: A 58% majority, including 83% of Democrats and 32% of Republicans, supported mail-in voting in the Pew poll released Friday.
- "The partisan gap over in-person early voting is narrower, and support has grown among Republicans since last year," researchers Steven Shepard, Joseph Copeland, Shanay Gracia and Jocelyn Kiley wrote.
- "Today, majorities in both parties (89% of Democrats, 71% of Republicans) favor at least two weeks of early, in-person voting."
State of play: Trump announced plans on Monday to sign an executive order ending mail-in voting, aiming to bring "HONESTY" to the 2026 midterm elections, he said.
- White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Axios on Saturday: "President Trump wants to secure America's elections and protect the vote, restoring the integrity of our elections by requiring voter ID, ensuring no illegal ballots are cast, and preventing cheating through lax and incompetent voting laws in states like California and New York."
Context: In the last presidential election, Trump voters (38%) were more likely to vote in person on Election Day than voters who supported then-Vice President Harris (29%), the Pew center said.
The fine print: The poll, conducted August 4-10, among 3,554 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.
Go deeper:
- Trump raises end to mail-in ballots after claiming Putin questioned their security
- Trump lays out his redistricting endgame: A 100-seat Republican majority
Editor's note: This story has been updated with a White House statement.
