Republicans Shift Strategies on Early Voting

For months, Republicans have invested significant time and resources to persuade former President Donald J. Trump’s staunch supporters to embrace early voting. Recent evidence suggests that their efforts may be bearing fruit.

As polls prepare to open on Tuesday in Wisconsin, early voting has already begun in all seven crucial swing states. By Monday, approximately 17 million voters across the nation had cast their ballots, with early indications showing that Republican voters are participating with greater enthusiasm than in previous years. Local Republican officials and canvassers are actively encouraging voter turnout by reiterating the same debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud that Mr. Trump has long championed, which raise doubts about the electoral process.

“They have done a better job of turning out their voters to vote early,” noted Sam Almy, a Democratic political strategist who monitors early voting trends in Arizona. “I think they realized that early voting is easy and convenient: It turns out your voters quickly, and they don’t have to gamble on turning out all their voters on Election Day.”

This shift in strategy marks a notable change from four years ago when Mr. Trump vehemently criticized any voting method that did not occur in person on Election Day. As states broadened access to mail-in and absentee voting during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Trump consistently discouraged his supporters from utilizing these options. He claimed that mail ballots would lead to “chaos and confusion,” and asserted—without any substantiated evidence—that they would result in “election interference by foreign countries.” Many of his followers accepted these assertions, contributing to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, which was propelled by a strong Democratic turnout in early and mail-in voting.

This year, Mr. Trump has adopted a more ambiguous stance regarding various voting methods, while many within his party have worked diligently to change their narrative. The Republican National Committee, now co-chaired by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, has directed resources toward initiatives aimed at encouraging Republican voters to submit their ballots early. Notably, the former president himself participated in early voting during the Florida Republican primary earlier this summer.

Despite this new approach, Mr. Trump continues to voice his objections. During a campaign stop in Pennsylvania last month, he labeled early voting as “stupid stuff,” moments after urging his audience to “start right away.” Earlier in the year, he referred to mail-in voting as “totally corrupt” at a rally in Michigan, and in an interview with a British journalist in March, he claimed that mail-in ballots inevitably lead to “cheating.”