Registered Democrats are casting ballots ahead of Election Day at a disproportionately higher rate, according to data from the state.
About 64% of mail-in ballots received through Sunday night and ballots submitted in-person during early voting combined — more than 480,000 ballots — came from registered Democrats, according to an analysis of data from the State Board of Elections. By comparison, about 54% of the 4.1 million eligible active voters in Maryland are registered Democrats.
Registered Republicans submitted about 23% — or just over 175,000 — of those ballots. That largely lines up with the 24% of the state’s eligible active voters who are registered Republicans.
Voters who are either registered with a different political party or unaffiliated with any party accounted for about 13% of the ballots received by election officials through Sunday night, the data shows.
The Democratic advantage seems to come largely from mail-in ballots. More than 70% of the mail-in ballots received by election officials as of Sunday night came from registered Democrats, compared with just under 17% that came from registered Republicans and about 13% that came from voters not affiliated with either of the two major parties.
The breakdown of people who cast ballots in-person at early voting centers between Oct. 27 and Nov. 3 more closely mirrors the state’s partisan divide. About 58% of those voters were registered Democrats, while about 29% were registered Republicans and 12% were unaffiliated with political parties. Voters affiliated with other political parties made up less than 1%.
Marylanders who voted early in-person also skewed older. About 80% were 45 or older, with a fairly even split between voters age 45 to 64 and voters 65 and older. About 16% were between 25 and 44 years old, and about 3% were aged 18 to 24.
The most popular early voting center was the McFaul Activity Center in Harford County. That location had 11,689 voters across the eight days. The least well-attended was Patapsco Elementary School in South Baltimore, which saw fewer than 500 voters.
However, Montgomery and Baltimore counties were nearly tied for the largest numbers of both mail-in ballots and early in-person voters. Each had just under 56,000 people cast ballots in person and had received about 63,000 mail-in ballots by Sunday night. The two counties are the most populous and third-most populous in the state, respectively.
