An NBC News poll shows Democratic voters are abandoning mail-in ballots at a striking rate ahead of the 2026 midterms, a shift that could reshape how both parties count on early returns and when election results become clear.

Only 23 percent of registered Democrats now say they plan to vote by mail in the upcoming midterm elections, down 11 points from the 34 percent who said the same in mid-September 2024, the poll found. The survey of 1,000 registered voters, conducted September 11, 15 by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies, carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Where are those Democratic mail voters going? Straight to the early-voting booth. Thirty-six percent of Democrats now say they plan to vote in person at an early voting site, up six points from the same window two years ago. Another 36 percent say they will show up on Election Day itself, roughly unchanged from 2024's 35 percent. Five percent said they were unsure or unlikely to vote at all.

The numbers amount to a quiet but measurable reversal of a pattern Democrats built during the Covid-era 2020 election, when the party leaned heavily into mail-in voting and never fully let go. Now, with President Trump pushing to tighten mail-ballot rules and the broader political landscape turning hostile to Democrats, rank-and-file liberal voters appear to be hedging their bets, or losing confidence in a system their own party championed.

Republican habits held steady while independents shifted

Republican voters, by contrast, showed almost no movement at all. Sixteen percent said they would vote by mail, 26 percent chose early in-person voting, and 53 percent said they would cast ballots on Election Day, all virtually unchanged from 2024. The consistency suggests GOP voters already settled into their preferred voting method and feel no pressure to change it.

Independents moved in a direction that mirrors the Democratic shift, though less dramatically. Twenty-five percent of independents said they would vote by mail, down three points from 28 percent in 2024. Early in-person voting among independents rose to 28 percent from 22 percent. Election Day voting dropped slightly, from 41 percent to 37 percent. Fifteen percent of independents said they were unsure or unlikely to cast ballots, a number worth watching in a midterm cycle where turnout often decides close races.

The decline in Democratic enthusiasm for mail-in voting comes at a moment when the party can least afford operational confusion. A separate Fox News poll found that only 30 percent of registered voters view the Democratic Party positively, compared to 52 percent who view it negatively. A record 70 percent disapprove of the job congressional Democrats are doing, up six points since December 2025. Even among their own voters, just 62 percent of Democrats view the party favorably, compared to 77 percent of Republicans who feel good about the GOP.

Democrats hold a 23-point early-vote edge, but Republicans own Election Day

Jeff Horwitt, the Democrat pollster from Hart Research Associates who helped conduct the NBC survey, offered a candid assessment of what the voting-method data means for election night itself:

"Among early voters, Democrats have a 23-point advantage on the congressional ballot, but among Election Day voters, Republicans have a 14-point advantage. So, if a blue wave comes in, it will hit land at different times, and even on different days or weeks."

That split has practical consequences. In states that count mail and early ballots first, Democrats could appear to lead on election night before in-person returns tilt the final result toward Republicans. In states that count mail ballots last, the reverse could happen, early GOP leads could narrow as mail ballots trickle in. The shift toward in-person voting by Democrats could compress that gap, but it also means Democrats are voluntarily moving toward a voting method where Republicans already dominate.

Democrats in Congress have spent recent months positioning for the midterms with an ambitious legislative wish list. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries laid out a plan to reshape the Supreme Court and eliminate the filibuster if Democrats retake the House and Senate, proposals that assume a level of electoral strength the party's own polling does not support.

Trump's mail-ballot executive order loomed over the poll itself

The NBC News poll was conducted over five days, from September 11 through September 15. On the evening of September 14, squarely in the middle of the survey window, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked an executive order from President Trump that sought to impose new criteria for states sending out mail ballots ahead of the midterms. The timing means some respondents answered before the Court's decision and some answered after, making it difficult to isolate whether the ruling itself moved any numbers.

The Supreme Court's decision to block the executive order removed one immediate obstacle to mail-in voting, yet Democrats still moved away from it. That disconnect suggests the shift is not driven by fear of new restrictions alone. Something broader is at work, whether it is distrust of the mail system, a desire to vote in person for certainty, or a reaction to years of partisan fighting over ballot integrity.

The poll did not specify what new criteria Trump's executive order would have required states to meet. But the president has made clear he wants to curtail mail-in voting, a position that has drawn legal challenges and political resistance from Democrats who expanded mail access during and after the pandemic.

A party losing faith in its own playbook

Democrats built their post-2020 electoral infrastructure around mail-in voting. They fought legal battles to expand it, spent millions encouraging voters to use it, and organized around early ballot collection as a core turnout strategy. The 11-point drop in Democratic mail-voting intention is not a minor fluctuation within the poll's margin of error, it is a shift large enough to force campaign operatives to rethink how they allocate resources for 2026.

The party's broader struggles compound the problem. When House Democrats voted down a constitutional amendment to cap the Supreme Court at nine justices, they undercut their own leadership's court-packing rhetoric and left voters with one more reason to question whether the party's agenda is coherent.

And the credibility issues extend beyond Washington. A Texas Democratic PAC fired an organizer caught on video describing cash payments to voters as a "roundabout way" to buy votes, the kind of story that erodes public trust in the very electoral machinery Democrats have spent years defending.

The NBC poll surveyed voters using a mix of telephone interviews and an online survey delivered via text message. Hart Research Associates, a Democratic firm, and Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican firm, conducted the poll jointly, a bipartisan methodology designed to minimize partisan bias in the results.

What the numbers mean for November 2026

If the trend holds, the 2026 midterms could look structurally different from recent elections. A smaller Democratic mail-ballot pool means fewer ballots arriving days after polls close. It means fewer drawn-out counts in battleground states. And it means Republicans, who already preferred Election Day voting by wide margins, may face a more compressed and competitive election night rather than the slow-drip mail-ballot reversals that defined 2020 and several 2022 races.

Horwitt's warning about a "blue wave" hitting land "at different times, and even on different days or weeks" acknowledged what Republicans have argued for years: that the mechanics of vote-counting shape public perception of legitimacy. When mail ballots shift results days after Election Day, voters on both sides lose confidence. Democrats moving toward in-person voting, voluntarily, without being forced by any court order, may be the clearest sign yet that even their own base has grown uneasy with the system the party built.

When voters stop trusting a party's favorite tool, the party has a problem that no amount of messaging can fix.