Politics
Republicans push mail-in voting for the midterms in defiance of Trump
Republicans are making mail-in voting a core part of their midterm battle plans — a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump’s efforts to abolish the practice as they scramble to turn out his base.
In Wisconsin, the state party is preparing a full-court press of mailers, emails, phone banks, door knocks and digital ads to get voters to sign up for mail ballots.
In Michigan, the Monroe County GOP ran a social media campaign ahead of the fall election urging voters to utilize permanent absentee ballots and is planning an even bigger push next year.
In Pennsylvania, where Republicans poured $16 million into boosting the number of GOP voters using mail ballots in 2024, the state party chair called it “a priority” for 2026. The nonprofit Citizens Alliance, which aided efforts to get Republicans to return their mail ballots in Pennsylvania last year, is planning to knock 750,000 doors ahead of the midterms to encourage infrequent voters to embrace the practice.
And the Republican National Committee intends to build on the aggressive early mail and in-person voting campaign it ran successfully in 2024, after shying away from the practice in 2020, while also supporting election security efforts including stopping ballots from being counted after Election Day, according to a person granted anonymity to describe the committee’s plans.
“Democrats have built a pretty massive structural advantage in early voting for a long, long time. And we just can’t keep going into election night 100,000 votes down and expect to make it up in 12 hours,” Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming said in an interview. “Treating early voting as optional, or something Democrats do, is a losing gamble.”
Trump has long falsely decried mail voting as rife with fraud. Over the summer, he vowed that Republicans “are going to do everything possible [to] get rid of mail-in ballots.” In November, and again this week, he called on Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster and pass a law to ban mail-in voting.
But, as has been the case for several years, he and his party are out of sync.
Rattled by electoral losses across the country this year and fearing a turnout slump in 2026 when control of Congress is on the line, Republican party chairs and operatives in battleground states Trump flipped by razor-thin margins in 2024 are turning to mail-in voting to keep lower-propensity voters engaged when he’s not on the ballot. They’re redoubling the 2024 efforts they ran successfully despite Trump alternating between promoting and railing against the practice — a turnabout after his vilification of mail ballots contributed to GOP losses in 2020.
Now, back in office, Trump is escalating his war against mail ballots. He signed an executive order in March that attempted to bar states from counting ballots that arrive after Election Day, along with other election-system overhauls. Judges have blocked most of the order, and the Supreme Court is set to decide whether federal law prohibits states from counting late-arriving ballots postmarked by Election Day.
Despite pledging to “lead a movement” to eliminate “corrupt” voting by mail ahead of the midterms, Trump has yet to issue another executive order on it. State courts have upheld vote-by-mail programs expanded during the pandemic. And presidents have little authority over state-run elections, whose rules are guided by federal and state law rather than presidential decree.
State and local Republicans, seeing few paths to overturning mail voting programs, are forging ahead — swallowing their own misgivings about ballot security in an effort to cut into a Democratic advantage as early voting options turn Election Day into election season.
Pressed about their mission appearing antithetical to Trump’s rhetoric, Republican operatives uniformly insisted they’re simply trying to play by the rules they’ve been given and that they support the president trying to change them — even if they’re unsure he’ll succeed.
“In Michigan, that’s the law of the land unless we can find a U.S. constitutional override, which I doubt that’s going to happen,” said Jim Runestad, a state senator who chairs the Michigan Republican Party. So, he said, “we’ll be fully engaged in early and absentee voting — we have to be.”
Still, the renewed dispute between Trump and his party over mail-in voting is the latest evidence of cracks forming in the ordinarily unified Republican Party. GOP lawmakers throughout the country, from New Hampshire to Indiana, have been rebuffing the president’s push for an aggressive redistricting effort to shore up his party’s chances of keeping its slim House advantage next year. Democrats need to net just three seats in order to seize control over the lower chamber. And several members of Trump’s base, namely departing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, bucked him on the yet-to-be-released Jeffrey Epstein files.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Republicans have already shown some success in convincing their voters to embrace mail voting. In Pennsylvania — where now-Sen. Dave McCormick’s campaign, party committees and outside groups spent millions promoting the practice — GOP voters cast 32.4 percent of mail ballots in 2024, up from 23.7 percent four years earlier, helping Trump narrowly flip the state. Roughly one in five Republican voters who cast ballots in the state that year had not participated in any elections since 2020, suggesting the method worked for some low-propensity voters who the party has to work harder to turn out.
Nationally, roughly three in 10 ballots in the 2024 general election were cast by mail, according to a U.S. Election Assistance Commission report from June. That was down from 43 percent in 2020, at the pandemic’s peak, but higher than pre-Covid, according to the report.
“We have to encourage people to embrace mail-in voting and early voting,” Pennsylvania GOP Chair Greg Rothman said in an interview. “That has to be a priority for us in 2026.”
Rothman won’t be alone in that fight. Citizens Alliance, the nonprofit founded by Pennsylvania-based conservative activist Cliff Maloney that hired over 100 people to chase ballots across roughly 500,000 doors in 2024, is gearing up to knock 750,000 in 2026. The Republican State Leadership Committee, which helped fund mail-ballot programs in Pennsylvania last year, put more than $2 million behind turnout efforts in New Jersey and Virginia this year and said it’s “doubling down” on the program in 2026.
“Without Trump on the ballot, the low-propensity problem is an epidemic” and “Republicans have to adapt or die,” Maloney said. “The blessing here is that there’s a solution — and the solution is to actually put dollars, cents, time and energy into the same tactics that the left uses to target low-propensity voters.”
State and county parties in Wisconsin and Michigan are planning similarly aggressive efforts, though they, like other Republican officials interviewed for this story, declined to share details or put price tags on strategies still taking shape. In Michigan, where voters can sign up for a permanent mail ballot list, Monroe County GOP Chair Todd Gillman sees it as a way to get more people engaged in more under-the-radar local elections.
But even as they try to make inroads with mail voting, Republicans in other states are attempting to follow Trump in restricting the practice. Ohio’s GOP-controlled Legislature last month passed a bill that would invalidate nearly all ballots received after Election Day that were postmarked prior to the deadline. The state’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, is now weighing whether to sign it. Utah GOP Gov. Spencer Cox signed a similar bill earlier this year. Republican-led Kansas Legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of another bill eliminating the grace period, which is being challenged in court.
And Republicans pushing mail-in voting remain somewhat hamstrung by their standard bearer’s scaremongering, which has sown a deep distrust among GOP voters that party officials and activists say they’re still working to reverse.
Trump made baseless claims of mail-voting fraud the basis for his constellation of stolen-election conspiracy theories in 2020. He piled on in 2024, suggesting scores of Pennsylvania ballots were fraudulent and accusing postal workers of “purposefully” losing some mail ballots — even as his campaign, the RNC and GOP-aligned groups prioritized early voting initiatives. Last month, as Californians voted to approve mid-decade redistricting in response to a GOP-led redraw in Texas, Trump threatened legal action that never materialized over ballots cast by mail in a state that sends one to every voter.
GOP operatives have a script for that, insisting to wary Republicans that they’ve made voting by mail more secure and informing them of the various options they have to ensure their ballots reach election offices, including hand delivery.
“We don’t necessarily like early voting or absentee ballots,” Gillman said. “But those are the rules we have to play by.”
Jessica Piper contributed to this report.
Not everyone thinks there’s an affordability crisis.
While many Americans say the cost of living is the top issue facing the U.S. more than any other, President Donald Trump’s MAGA base does not always agree, according to a new analysis of The POLITICO Poll. Just 28 percent of voters who self-identify as part of the MAGA movement say expenses have become less affordable since Trump took office.
In fact, MAGA voters are more likely to say things have gotten better rather than worse.
That’s a stark break from the rest of the country, including the voters who backed Kamala Harris in 2024 and those who voted for Trump but do not identify as part of the MAGA movement.
The Blue Light News Poll results reveal a complicated challenge for Republicans: In an election all about the economy, cost of living concerns are reinforcing partisanship divides — entrenching Democrats’ opposition to Trump — while also driving a wedge among Republicans’ own base. Now, GOP candidates are facing frustrated voters from all sides.
Harris voters are far more likely than Trump voters to say groceries, gas and other expenses have gotten more expensive since the president took office, despite facing similar increases in household costs, according to a Blue Light News analysis of cost of living data.
Democrats hope to ride that frustration to victory in November, and have made affordability their top messaging issue this fall. They’re poised to benefit from the backlash to Trump’s economic agenda — from his unpopular tariffs to an Iran war that’s raised gas prices — which politicians and strategists widely agree are helping motivate Democratic voters.
“Those Democrats are definitely going to go vote,” said Michigan-based GOP strategist Jason Roe. “And we’ve got some voters that are a little harder to get to the polls, and when they are mad, frustrated, disappointed, disillusioned, in disagreement, and we don’t have them motivated, that’s going to be a problem.”
Many of those disillusioned Trump voters, The Blue Light News Poll suggests, are the ones who don’t identify as part of the MAGA base.
Consider the 52% of non-MAGA Trump voters who say the cost of living in their area is the “worst” it has ever been: Nearly half say they either wouldn’t vote for a Republican in the midterms or are still making up their minds.
But what is a boon to Democrats today could be a problem for them later. Partisanship also shapes how Americans remember the economy in years past, the poll results show.
Harris voters have a more favorable memory toward Democratic presidents and Trump voters have a more favorable memory toward Republican presidents, each saying life was more affordable when their party held the reins.
Democrats and Republicans simply don’t share an understanding of the economic reality — and without a common frame for the past, nor whether things are improving in the present, any party in power stands to lose its grip against an increasingly frustrated opposition when the economy is the key issue.
This year, that will be a major challenge for Republicans.
MAGA vs. Non-MAGA vs. Democrats
The Blue Light News Poll asked adults across America last month about affordability in their area, including about local prices and their memory of when prices were more affordable in the past.
Across the board, Harris voters outpaced Trump voters in their pessimism about the economy. And among Trump voters, non-MAGA voters outpaced their MAGA counterparts.
For example, 70% of Harris voters and 52% of non-MAGA Trump voters say the cost of living is worse than they can “ever remember it being.” MAGA Trump voters disagreed — a 43% plurality said the cost of living today is bad, but they could “remember times when it was worse.”
The results are a warning sign about the Trump coalition: In question after question, the president’s most loyal base is still sticking with him, but among the non-MAGA voters he convinced to back him in 2024, their frustration more closely resembles how Harris voters feel.
“There will be voters who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 who know he’s made life more expensive and won’t vote for his party this time,” said longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “Some will vote for a Democrat, some won’t vote. But they won’t cast a ballot for a Republican who they blame for the high cost of living.”
Of the non-MAGA Trump voters who say the cost of living is the worst they’ve seen, just 53% say they would vote for a Republican if the midterms were held tomorrow. More than 25% would vote for a Democrat or third-party candidate. The rest say they would stay home or have not yet made up their minds.
Changes to family budgets are similar on average among those that voted for Trump and those who voted for Harris, according to a Blue Light News analysis of data from the Living Wage Institute, a nonpartisan public benefit corporation that produces cost of living data. Across the country, family budgets have increased by 2.5 percent on average from early 2025 to early 2026, according to the Living Wage Institute.
But it is the concept of who is to blame that creates division among each voting bloc. Though each group is concerned about affordability — the cost of living is the most common concern for each — only MAGA Trump voters remain sympathetic to the current administration.
Young voters — and young men in particular — have also grown disillusioned with the Trump administration amid cost of living concerns, a warning sign for the GOP. Among those under the age of 25 who say the cost of living is the worst it’s ever been, 56% say they trust Democrats to bring down the costs. Just 20% trust Republicans to do the same.
“Young people feel like the system isn’t working for them,” said Joe Mitchell, a Republican running for Iowa’s open and competitive 2nd District. Mitchell, who is 29, would be the second Gen Z member to join the House if elected. “You see them being attracted to some of these DSA candidates like Zohran Mamdani. And they’re going to be attracted to these candidates if we don’t figure something out for them now.”
Partisanship even drives memory
Partisanship also colors how Americans see the past, making it difficult for any incumbent party to convince voters of plans for the future.
The Blue Light News Poll asked respondents whether it was easier or harder to afford everyday items in years past compared to today in one of two ways: In one, they were asked about a specific calendar year, and in another, the presidential administration in power at the time.
For each question framed around a calendar year, Trump and Harris voters gave similar answers. But when asked to compare how easy or hard it was to afford things during a particular presidential administration compared to today, their answers split along party lines.
For example, just over a third of both Harris and Trump voters said it was “easier” to afford everyday items in 2024 compared to today. But when asked the same question about the “end of [former President] Joe Biden’s term,” 55% of Harris voters said everyday items were easier to afford, compared to 39% of Trump voters.
The results show that Americans lack a common frame of reference on the issue most people care about — the cost of living — creating a massive hurdle for politicians hoping to win over new voters who may not be willing to listen.
The same effect happens among Trump voters looking back on a Democratic administration. When asked about costs in 2010 compared to today, 63% of Trump voters said everyday items were easier to afford then compared to now. But when asked about costs during the “middle” of former President Barack Obama’s first term — or 2010 — only 36% of Trump voters said the same.
It’s only when a political party is attached that Americans’ version of the truth changes.
When Blue Light News asked whether it was easier or harder to afford everyday items “just before the Covid-19 pandemic” or in “2019,” majorities from both parties said things were easier to afford then, and in both framings.
The challenge for both parties is that voters don’t know “who has a better plan for the future,” GOP communications strategist Kevin Madden said. “Instead, what you’re seeing is a gap — or a canyon — emerge between the rest of the country and Washington.”
He added: “When you see that gap emerge, watch out if you’re an incumbent.”
Alisa Vasquez and Andrew Howard contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump is hitting the campaign trail — and a series of his stops are in deep-red states he comfortably won in 2024.
Trump will campaign in Iowa, Florida, Texas and Alaska ahead of Election Day, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who were granted anonymity to discuss not-yet-public plans. That’s on top of his scheduled stop in Oklahoma next week, as the RNC announced, and his visit to Alabama, which POLITICO first reported.
While the president has indicated a desire to stump for Ken Paxton in Texas and Dan Sullivan in Alaska, the addition of Iowa and Florida to his campaign schedule signals an expanded focus on red states as Republicans grow increasingly nervous heading into the final stretch of the midterms.
The president is also preparing to hold campaign rallies in more traditional battleground states starting Oct. 3, according to one of the people.
His travel schedule is a clear signal that the GOP is seeking to shore up their own territory — as rising voter anger over sky-high costs and mass deportations creates new openings for Democrats. The six confirmed states have highly watched Senate, House and gubernatorial contests this November, but they are also ones Trump won by double digits two years ago.
“While Democrats squabble over the last two cents their party has to spare, the president is barnstorming the country, energizing our base, and supercharging Republican candidates in key races and beyond,” said Natalie Baldassarre, an RNC spokesperson.
“We have the resources to spend, and Republicans are full steam ahead to protect and expand our majorities,” Baldassarre added.
The White House referred Blue Light News to the RNC.
Vice President JD Vance will also ramp up his campaign travel ahead of Election Day. He and Trump are expected to make stops in Ohio to boost GOP Sen. Jon Husted, as POLITICO has reported. Husted is trailing former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in internal GOP polling by top Senate Republicans, according to two other people with direct knowledge of the matter, granted anonymity to share private details.
Trump’s latest midterms travel swing will first start with Oklahoma and Alabama — two deep-red states where Democrats haven’t made the same inroads in statewide elections as they have in other traditionally conservative states like Texas, Alaska and Kansas.
But his Alabama event could help drive turnout and shore up support for GOP state Rep. Rhett Marques, who is in a competitive race with Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures in the state’s 2nd District, despite Republicans’ effort to redraw the seat in their favor.
Republicans in Iowa, Texas and Alaska are growing increasingly alarmed about how close their Senate races are amid fallout from the Iran war and other policy moves by Trump. Florida Republicans have become uneasy about their own firewall, with some polling showing statewide races inside the margin of error.
Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate nominee in Iowa, recently publicly broke with Trump over the Iran war, as did several other Iowa House Republicans.
“The bigger question on everything continues to be, whatever you do, will there be enough time. I just don’t know,” said one person close to the White House. “We’re teetering on the edge of it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Alec Hernández contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is running into resistance within his own voter coalition, as more and more Republican candidates publicly break with him ahead of the November election.
New results from The POLITICO Poll help explain why: Non-MAGA Trump voters are more than twice as likely as self-identified MAGA Trump voters to say his mass deportation campaign is too aggressive, 31% to 14%. While roughly similar shares of both groups believe Trump’s campaign is about right, the MAGA base wants him to go even further: 36% of MAGA Trump voters say his campaign is not aggressive enough, compared with 23% of non-MAGA Trump voters.
Meanwhile, support across Trump’s entire voter coalition falls when it comes to deporting people beyond the most violent offenders, such as those with minor criminal offenses or who have been living in the U.S. for years without legal status.
The new survey, conducted by London-based Public First, reveals how Trump’s immigration agenda — which has long been one of his signature political issues and a reliable GOP rallying point — has divided the very coalition that helped power his two presidential wins. The president’s MAGA loyalists are still more inclined than other Trump voters to support a tougher immigration posture, but there are clear limits to how far voters want the administration to go.
Those intraparty tensions burst into public view this month, when Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) released a campaign ad pushing back against Trump’s deportation agenda, saying some of his efforts “have gone too far” and that Hispanic voters who supported him in 2024 “feel betrayed.” It was a remarkable break from a sitting GOP lawmaker over one of the president’s defining policies, as Democrats have locked in on Florida’s 27th District as a prime target in their bid to flip the House.
Salazar’s public rift with Trump exemplifies the fears Republicans had been privately warning about for months: that the president’s immigration enforcement — marked last year by high-profile, flashy raids that rippled through communities — was alienating moderate Republicans, independents, young voters and Latinos who support border security and immigration enforcement in theory but dislike how it is being carried out.
And as the party stares down a difficult midterm landscape, including in districts and states Trump won in 2024, other GOP candidates followed Salazar’s lead, increasingly putting distance between themselves and the administration on key issues like immigration — despite having voted last year to approve billions of dollars for border security and immigration enforcement. On Wednesday, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), whose race has tightened against Democrat Adam Hamilton, also softened his stance on Immigration and Customs Enforcement as raids in southwest Kansas prompt temporary business closures and schools.
“When ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement. Our sheriffs and police know these communities better than anyone, and working together keeps officers and residents safe,” he wrote on social media, adding that he’s been in direct contact with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
The Blue Light News Poll finds most Americans — including majorities of both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters — believe people convicted of serious violent or sexual offenses should be prioritized for deportation, underscoring broad agreement on a more targeted approach to enforcement.
The survey also finds that few people — including among both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters — prioritized targeting other groups for deportations. Less than a quarter of each group say people convicted of minor criminal offenses should be prioritized. Support falls further when voters are asked about prioritizing people who have lived in the U.S. for several years without legal status or people with dependent children in the U.S.
“A lot of it has to do with how you talk about it. They don’t want amnesty for people who have broken the law. They want everybody to do it the right way,” said a person close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss how Republicans are viewing the issue. “They understand that some people might be law-abiding, hard working.”
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said Blue Light News is “skewing data to paint a false narrative.”
“The American people sent President Trump back to the White House to stop the invasion of our country and deport the millions of illegal aliens Biden and Democrats allowed into the country. The president is delivering on his promises,” she said.
Days after releasing the ad, Salazar said she had a “fantastic conversation” with Trump and urged him to protect the political “fortune” he had brought to the Republican Party on immigration. She also told CBS last weekend that Trump and the average American understand “the between the narco and the nanny and the gangster and the gardener.”
She said the administration should distinguish between criminals and unauthorized immigrants working in crucial industries such as agriculture, construction, hospitality and health care.
That distinction is also reflected in The Blue Light News Poll. Both MAGA and non-MAGA Trump voters are open to maintaining or increasing the number of people coming into the U.S. to work in sectors facing labor shortages, such as health care or agriculture. Sixty-five percent of MAGA Trump voters and 69% non-MAGA Trump voters say they want to see about the same number — or more — people coming to the U.S. to work in those sectors facing labor shortages.
“Trump 2.0 that took over in January 2025 completely misread what voters were telling him and Joe Biden during 2024, which was that they wanted to see more order and security over the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Matt Barreto, who conducted polling for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign. “Instead, what Trump told Americans was, ‘Now I’m going to go hunt down immigrants who are just working and contributing to America.’ And there was extremely limited support for that.”
Past POLITICO polling on immigration has shown that the Trump administration has been unable to reverse the damage with voters on the issue. Last fall, battleground Republicans were already expressing concern about the administration’s immigration tactics. Those concerns intensified in the months that followed, while negative voter sentiment hardened by April after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration, in the wake of bipartisan outrage, softened its rhetoric and abandoned flashy raids that often devolved into clashes with protesters. The president also installed Mullin, who moved quickly to repair relationships on Capitol Hill and keep the Department of Homeland Security out of the headlines.
But Mullin is also facing pressure from MAGA critics and immigration hardliners who think he’s not committed to the president’s vow to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants. In an effort to shore up his support with that contingent, top administration accounts, including Mullin’s, have ramped up posts about ICE, arrests statistics and tough talk about the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda.
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