Watch or attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies, and you may well see something surprising: an electronic billboard encouraging people to vote by post. It’s a big u-turn for Trump, who has spent years maintaining that postal votes are manipulated.
Ahead of the 2020 election – which took place in the pre-vaccine era of the pandemic – Trump’s White House even blocked additional funding for the Postal Service, fearing that Democratic voters were more likely to avoid going to a polling station. Following the election, one of his many claims of voter fraud was predicated on supposedly corrupted postal ballots.
‘Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,’ Trump said
So why the sudden endorsement of postal voting? The answer is simple: although Trump remains personally sceptical, his campaign have realised that, far from favouring Democrats, postal votes are essential to helping him win.
It comes down to demographics. As Trump’s campaign knows, many of his most important potential voters are white Americans without college degrees. The Republicans’ support for postal voting targets the working-class white people who, although amenable to Trump, are not MAGA (Make America Great Again) loyalists.
The policy makes a lot of sense. White Americans without college degrees are among the least likely to go to a polling station. In many cases, their preference for Trump might not translate into casting a ballot. However, send them a form in the post, and give them weeks to fill it in, and they’re much more likely to vote.
There’s also a subtler way that postal voting is in the Republicans’ interest. Families that vote by post are more likely to discuss their choice together, and therefore choose the same candidate. Again, demographics – in particular gender roles in a household – help Trump. Research by public opinion analysts Lake Research Partners suggests that American men are much more likely than women to persuade their partners or family to vote the same way.
In many elections this might be a minor detail. However, this year’s race has a stark split along male-female lines, which polls estimate at a 30-point gap. Given that the male vote is seen as crucial to a Trump victory, postal votes could lead women who would have cast for Harris were they to have voted in a booth, to instead vote Republican.
But there remains a barrier preventing the GOP from taking advantage of this opportunity: their candidate. As was the case in 2020, Trump has repeatedly denied the reliability of postal votes. ‘Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,’ he said in February. ‘Get that through your head.’ And in September, just before postal voting opened in many states, he tweeted that the US Postal Service (USPS) could not be trusted.
Pushed by aides, Trump has occasionally promoted postal votes, but one wonders whether his history of fierce attacks against USPS will drown out his campaign’s new tactic. Either way, the Democrats are trying to profit from Trump’s fuzzy messaging.
Aware that Republicans would benefit from more voting by post, an underhand advert in the key swing state of Pennsylvania is using Trump’s previous statements against him. It begins with a banner reading ‘MAGA Patriots, listen to our president,’ then cuts to footage of Trump saying ‘Mail-in voting is totally corrupt. Get that through your head.’
This year, about half of American voters are set to cast their ballots in the post. One-and-a-half-million already have. With the election too close to call, and with his personal stakes so high, Trump would do well to toe the party line. It shouldn’t be too difficult. After all, Trump is no stranger to voting by post himself.
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