Do Americans support mail-in voting? What a new poll found after Trump criticism

A majority of Americans support mail-in voting, according to a new poll, which comes after President Donald Trump vowed to eliminate the process.

In the latest Pew Research Center survey, 58% of respondents said they favor “allowing any voter to vote by mail if they want to.” Meanwhile, 42% said they opposed this.

A significant partisan divide emerged on this question. Eighty-three percent of Democrats and left-leaning independents said they back voting by mail, while 68% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents said they were against it.

The results of the survey — which sampled 3,554 U.S. adults Aug. 4-10 — were published shortly after Trump renewed his attacks on mail-in voting.

“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” the president wrote in an Aug. 18 Truth Social post. “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS.”

He said he would sign an executive order to ensure “honesty” during the 2026 midterm elections.

The president has long been suspicious of voting by mail, often claiming fake mail-in ballots contributed to his 2020 election loss. However, no widespread election fraud — through mail-in ballots or otherwise — has ever been documented. He’s also said that no other country allows mail-in voting, which is not true.

The survey also asked respondents to weigh in on nine other proposals related to U.S. elections.

The most supported proposal was “Requiring electronic voting machines to print a paper backup of a voter’s ballot.” The vast majority of respondents, 84%, said they were in favor of this, while 15% said they were opposed.

Large shares also supported requiring every voter to provide government-issued photo identification (83%), allowing early, in-person voting for at least 14 days (80%), and making Election Day a national holiday (74%).

All four of these proposals were favored by most Democrats and Republicans.

Meanwhile, smaller majorities said they favored allowing formerly incarcerated people to vote (66%), automatic voter registration of all eligible voters (59%) and same-day registration (58%).

Just two of the 10 proposals drew more opposition than support, according to the survey, which has a margin of error of 1.8 percentage points.

Fifty-two percent said they oppose “banning groups from collecting completed ballots from a large number of voters to return them to election officials,” and 56% said they’re against “removing people from registration lists if they haven’t voted recently or responded to efforts to confirm their registration and address.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2025 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Do Americans support mail-in voting? What a new poll found after Trump criticism."