Half of Voters Say They Plan to Vote Early as Trump Continues Giving Mixed Messages on the Issue, Poll Shows

Half of registered voters plan to vote early ahead of the November elections. But the partisan split remains high, as more Democrats continue to prefer voting by mail or before Election Day, while Republicans rather wait for Nov. 5 to cast their ballot.

The data comes from the latest September NBC News poll, which shows a continued partisan preference on early voting.

The study revealed that 51% of voters say they'll vote early, either by mail or in person, with Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump 61%-35% among those voters, NBC News reports.

Conversely, Trump leads 20 points, 57%-37%, with the group of voters who plan to vote on Election Day, which accounts for 45% of the electorate in the poll. The study suggests that those figures represent a smaller lead among a slightly smaller share of the electorate than Harris over those early voters.

These gaps could present some challenges for the GOP with less than 45 days to the elections.

"Either the margin has to close among [those] voting early, or Republican margins on Election Day have to be bigger than this to win," said Bill McInturff, the Republican pollster who conducted the NBC News poll with Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.

Early voting, particularly by mail, rose to national attention during the 2020 election cycle. With pandemic and social distancing restrictions still in place, voters casted their ballots by mail in historic numbers. In fact, around 43% of all votes in 2020 were cast by mail, according to the Associated Press. The remaining share of voters were split about evenly between casting their ballots at a polling place on Election Day or during early voting before Nov. 3.

By comparison, roughly a quarter of all voters used a mailed ballot during the 2016 and 2018 elections.

Partisan splits were also present in 2020, when nearly four-in-ten Trump voters (37%) said they voted in person on Election Day, while just 17% of Biden voters said they cast their ballot at a polling place on Nov. 3, according to a Pew Research report.

Republican split over early voting comes as Trump has given mixed signals on the practice throughout his political career, at times supporting it, while others criticizing it.

The latest example of this happened during a rally this week in Indiana, Pennsylvania, when the former President said he was "here today because early voting begins in Pennsylvania over the next two weeks," and urged the audience to go out and vote.

"Go out, make a plan to vote early, vote absentee or vote-in-person on election day," he said during the rally.

But he quickly pivoted to his regular rhetoric, denouncing the procedure.

"Now we have this stupid stuff where you can vote 45 days early... I wonder what the hell happens during... [those] 45 [days]," he said despite encouraging voters to cast their absentee ballots just minutes before.