More than 1.8 million Ohioans have voted early ahead of the Nov. 5 election, with state data showing a pronounced shift away from voting by mail, especially outside of the state’s big urban counties.
Usually, around one-third of people who vote early do so in person. But, through Monday, 56% of early voters had cast ballots in person, according to figures from the Secretary of State’s office.
Meanwhile, 1.15 million people had requested absentee ballots, of which around 392,000 remained outstanding. This is down significantly from the last comparable election in 2016, when voters had requested nearly 1.6 million ballots by around this time in the election calendar. That change is even larger when compared to 2020, which saw a record high amount of voting by mail during the coronavirus pandemic.
At the equivalent time ahead of the 2016 election, 1 million people had voted early. In 2020, 2.1 million had voted early. This year’s early in-person vote dwarfs the early-in person vote in both years.
Early voting in Ohio one week from Election Day
| Early in-person votes | Mail votes | All early votes | |
| 2024 | 1,032,157 | 782,963 | 1,825,120 |
| 2020 | 743,130 | 1,432,126 | 2,175,256 |
| 2016 | 288,865 | 766,017 | 1,054,882 |
Source: Signal analysis of Ohio Secretary of State data, 2020 SOS press release
The trend away from mail voting was stronger in counties considered rural. In these 73 counties, 65% of early votes were cast in-person.
In six counties considered suburban, the number was 61%.
In Ohio’s eight largest urban counties, 46% of early votes were cast in person – a percentage that’s lower than other types of counties but still high by historical standards.
Voters in rural and suburban counties are voting early – both in person and by mail – at similar rates compared to the overall turnout in 2020. But voters in urban counties are turning out at slightly lower rates. There are a larger number of outstanding mail ballots in urban counties, but not enough to explain the disparity.
Does trend reflect Republican messaging around early voting?
It’s an open question whether early vote numbers suggest higher turnout outside of urban counties – which ostensibly would be a sign of higher Republican voter enthusiasm – or simply reliable Election Day voters deciding to vote early instead, which politicos refer to as “cannibalizing” the Election Day vote.
The shift accompanies steady Republican messaging, led by former president Donald Trump, that mail voting is unsecure. This year, Trump allies, including the national Republican Party, have pushed early voting as a way to make the results “too big to rig,” a reference to Trump’s false claims that voter fraud caused him to lose the 2020 election.
In Putnam County, a rural county about an hour and 15 minutes southwest of Toledo, 7,170 people had voted early through Tuesday. That’s up from 5,363 in the 2016 election, although it’s running slightly behind the 7,509 early votes that had been cast by this time in 2020.
Putnam County Republican Party Chairman Tony J. Schroeder said party officials have promoted early voting as the way to neutralize a tactical advantage Democrats historically have had. He also said he the idea is trickling down to rank and file Republicans.
“We’ve got a voter base that’s much more attuned to the idea and comfortable with early voting,” he said.
But more so, Schroeder said he believes strong early-vote turnout reflects enthusiasm among Republican voters, based on political events he’s attended and conversations he’s had with people at the county’s early vote center.
“I’ve been asking around the state, and everybody is saying the same thing,” he said. “This is feeling like the 2016 surge to us.”
The shift away from mail voting makes early voting centers look busier. Cuyahoga County is likely to set a single-day early in-person voting record sometime this weekend, the final weekend of early, in-person voting before Election Day. But doesn’t necessarily mean more people are actually voting early, since the bulk of early voting historically has been unseen and done by mail.
It also places a greater burden on elections officials, since processing large volumes of mail is much easier than dealing with large volumes of people.
Turnout in Cuyahoga County is running behind the Democratic Party’s goal
David Brock, chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, said Cuyahoga County is running behind his goal of 190,000 mail ballots. It is expected to end up being around 170,000, based on the number of mail ballots that are unreturned.
But Brock said he’s been “overwhelmed” with early in-person votes, a number he said is on track to exceed his turnout goal of 50,000.
“We’re also pretty pleased with who is voting,” he said, referencing party modeling about the early vote electorate.
Brock said some Democratic voters are concerned about mail voting, too. Part of their questions date back to 2020, when Democrats viewed Trump administration cuts to the U.S. Postal Service as politically motivated, although Brock said mail delivery times have been fast this year.
“There’s a lot of concern,” he said. “They have this sense that ‘If I vote in person, one, it feels better, and two, it’s guaranteed, because mail gets lost.’ Now, I don’t buy that. But voting in person is a little easier.”
