Overwhelming majority favors early voting and photo ID laws: Gallup

A large majority of American voters say that they support early voting (78 percent) and requiring photo identification to vote (79 percent), according to a new Gallup poll.

The poll, released Friday, found that majorities favor four different election law policies, three of which are geared toward making voting easier and the remaining one toward protecting against voter fraud.

Almost all Democrats (95 percent) favored allowing early voting, compared to 60 percent of Republicans.

Conversely, 97 percent of Republicans support voter ID laws, while about half (53 percent) of Democrats support the measure.

The proportions of white people and people of color who agree with requiring photo identification to vote are nearly the same, 80 percent versus 77 percent.

In addition to early voting and photo ID laws, the majority of Americans approve of automatic voter registration (65 percent) and sending absentee ballots to all eligible voters (60 percent), according to the poll conducted in July.

A significant majority of Democrats (88 percent) approve of sending absentee ballots to all, while only 27 percent of Republicans approve of the measure, a 61 percent difference.

Majorities oppose removing inactive voters from voter lists (60 percent) and restricting the number of dropboxes to send in absentee ballots (59 percent).

Both of these restrictive election laws find 6 in 10 support among Republicans and less than 2 in 10 support from Democrats.

The survey, conducted over the phone with 1,013 respondents, has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Voter laws have come to the forefront following former President Trump’s false claims made after the 2020 election that the race was “stolen” from him by President Biden due to massive voter fraud.