Absentee ballot requests have dropped by over 80% in North Carolina since 2020, yet more young adults are requesting mail-in ballots than in previous years, according to recent data.

Absentee ballot request trends for the 2024 election in North Carolina show a significant shift from previous election cycles. The North Carolina State Board of Elections said on Monday that county boards have received more than 207,600 absentee ballot requests for this election, including more than 19,000 requests from military and overseas voters. That compares to over 900,000 at this point in 2020, when Covid-19 drove many to stay home.

After a delay due to reprinting, absentee ballots for North Carolina voters overseas were sent out on Friday, while ballots for voters within North Carolina will go out on Tuesday.

Karen Brinson Bell, Executive Director at NCSBE, disclosed during a press call that as of Monday morning, 102 ballots have been returned by military and overseas voters whose ballots were sent to them on Friday.

“The first votes have finally been cast in the 2024 general election in North Carolina,” Brinson Bell said, noting that most of these voters request, receive, and return their ballots electronically through the state board’s absentee ballot portal. “This is how we already have so many returned ballots from our military and overseas voters.”

The type of voters behind these absentee ballot requests, though, is an open question.

As of last week’s data, Democrats account for about 66,500 requests, or 38%, down from 54% in 2022 and 50% in 2020. This indicates that their once-strong edge in mail-in voting is diminishing. While Democrats still lead in overall absentee requests, Republicans are closing the gap, in line with the GOP’s effort to ‘bank your vote’ before Election Day. 

Republicans have increased their share, rising to about 40,000, or 23% of requests this year; compared to just 13% in 2022 and 17% in 2020, signaling substantial gains. Unaffiliated voters are also showing a steady increase, with their share growing from 32% in 2020 to 38% in 2024. Unaffiliated voters are the largest group of voters in the state.

The most dramatic change in absentee ballot requests is among young women, who have doubled their share of mail-in requests this year. The 18-24-year-old age group rose from 4% of all requests in 2020 and 2022 to 8% thus far in the 2024 election cycle, which could make them a focal point in key races.

“Though Republicans are higher in ballot requests compared to recent elections, Democratic women and unaffiliated women take up the largest shares,” explained Jim Stirling, Research Fellow at the John Locke Foundation. “These two groups make up the largest request for the 2024 cycle, which, when we consider polls, is not as favorable to Republican candidates like Robinson.”

The only other age/gender groups to increase their share of requests since 2020 are women ages 26-40 by 1%, and men ages 18-25 by 2%.

When ballots are mailed back to the counties, Stirling expects the return rates to remain around 70% universally, falling closely in line with 2020 and 2022 rates. There’s no way to determine which way the unaffiliated cohort will lean other than polling, though UNA mail-in ballots favored Democrats in 2020 and polling indicates that unaffiliated women will favor Democrats like Josh Stein.

According to the latest Carolina Journal poll released on Thursday, Stein is leading Mark Robinson in the race for governor by over six points. The data comes amid a CNN report that put Robinson in the national spotlight last week for inappropriate comments on adult websites.

The latest poll also shows presidential contestants Donald Trump and Kamala Harris essentially tied in North Carolina.