Half of voters plan to cast their ballot early – with a stark partisan divide

Americans are more eager to vote earlier than before the pandemic, but a deep partisan divide remains on early voting, the latest NBC News national poll shows.

With less than a month to go before Election Day, 5% of registered voters said they had already cast their vote (3% by mail and 2% in person), according to the new poll, which surveys people between Oct. 4 and Oct. 8 became .

Another 47% said they plan to vote early (20% by mail and 27% in person).

Overall, 52% of voters said they plan to cast their ballots early in the year and 44% plan to vote in person on Election Day. That's roughly consistent with NBC News poll results at a similar point in the 2022 midterm elections, when 49% of voters said they preferred to vote early and 47% said they planned to vote on Election Day.

Meanwhile, 3% said they were unsure what method they would use to vote and 1% said they would not vote.

But the latest poll results represent a decline from the 2020 election, which took place amid the coronavirus pandemic, when in early October 59% of respondents said they planned to vote early and 37% planned to wait to vote until Election Day. (By the end of October, the share of people who said they would vote early had risen to 68%.)

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The new numbers are also significantly higher than the 41% who said they planned to vote early in early November 2016, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll at the time, although fewer states offered early voting at a comparable time.