New Report: How We Voted in 2024

Don't have time to read the full report now? We've excerpted some of the topline findings from the report's executive summary here: 

Voting by mail

• The use of mail ballots in 2024 decreased from pandemic-era levels but stayed above historical norms.
• The partisan divide in mail voting continued, with more Democrats than Republicans utilizing this method, although the gap narrowed because of declining usage among Democrats.
• Patterns of ballot returns continued to evolve, with drop box usage rebounding and Postal Service usage decreasing modestly.
• Very few mail-in voters reported issues with requesting or completing their ballots.
• Nearly three percent of voters who returned their ballots at a drop box reported witnessing something disruptive, such as demonstrators, during the drop-off process.

Voting In-Person

• The percentage of voters casting ballots on Election Day increased to 40%, up from 31% in 2020 but down from 60% in 2016. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters casting ballots during early voting saw a slight uptick compared to 2020, rising to 31% from 26%.
• Most in-person voters noted a smooth process.
• In-person voting at schools has gradually declined over the past decade, and they are no longer the most common sites for Election Day voting.
• Average wait times for both Election Day and early voters decreased.
• The percentage of voters reporting that they showed a photo ID to vote increased since 2016 (when the question was last asked), and more voters reported having a driver’s license than before.
• Disruptions at polling places were infrequent, although there was a marked increase in reported picture-taking.

Reasons for not voting

• Approximately 7% of respondents indicated that they did not vote in 2024, likely due to social responsibility bias lowering this percentage.
• The leading reason for not voting was dissatisfaction with the candidates (21%), followed by illness or disability (12%) and “other” reasons (12%).
• Few respondents mentioned administrative obstacles like ID issues or confusion about where to vote.

Confidence in Elections

• Voter confidence was high across all levels in 2024.
• The partisan gap in confidence narrowed considerably.

Election security measures

• Voter awareness about election security measures remained low.
• Support for most security practices rose from 2022 to 2024, particularly among Republicans.

Fraud

• Respondents continue to believe that voter fraud is rare, but attitudes remain polarized along partisan lines.

Reform

• Support remained robust for mandatory paper backups of voting machines, requiring photo ID, automatically updating registration when voters change addresses, designating Election Day as a holiday, and selecting election officials on a nonpartisan basis. These reforms garnered majority backing from both parties.
• Support for cell phone voting, universal vote-by-mail, Internet voting, and mandating that all votes be cast on hand-marked paper ballots did not receive majority backing from either party.

Read the full report