After the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, top Republicans began to panic after seeing an “astronomical” early lead for Democrats.
According to The Washington Post, Democratic voters are requesting and returning mail-in ballots at a far higher rate than Republican voters so far in key battleground states. This is causing a panic in the Republican Party.
“It’s astronomical,” said one Republican strategist who’s working on Senate races. “You see these numbers in a state like North Carolina, and how can you not be concerned?”
According to the report, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has met twice with Trump and urged him to stop attacking mail-in voting because it’ll discourage Republican voters from participating. As we saw in the debate, Trump did not take the advice.
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“I’ve seen these appeals to likely Republican voters — ‘Please apply for your absentee ballot,’” said GOP pollster Whit Ayres. “But it’s at the same time those voters are hearing from their president that mail voting is ripe with fraud.”
More than 9 million voters have requested mail ballots in Florida, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — the five battleground states where that data is available — and 52 percent of those were Democrats, while only 28 percent were Republicans and 20 percent were unaffiliated.
According to Internal data from both parties, similar trends appeared to happen in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wisconsin.
