New Jersey voters like state’s mostly mail election

New Jerseyans broadly support the state’s decision to move to a mostly mail election, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released Friday.

The survey found 69% of likely voters backed the decision to increase access to mail-in ballots and deemphasize in-person voting on election day. That support rose slightly, to 71%, when vote-by-mail expansion was tied to the COVID-19 crisis.

“New Jersey voters mirror national trends when it comes to support for mail-in voting,” said Ashley Koning, director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling. “This support fluctuates, however, depending on whether or not voting by mail is put within the context of the pandemic.”

Unsurprisingly, that support saw a split along party lines. Almost all Democrats said they backed mail-voting expansion, while about 40% of Republicans said the same.

About 75% of likely voters said they did not intend to return their ballots in-person. Of those, a little less than half, 51% said they used or planned to use a secure ballot drop box, the most popular option. Another 34% said they would return they would send their vote in through the post. Just 13% said they would drop their ballot off at their county elections board.

Of the 23% that said they would vote in person, 53% said they intended to vote using a provisional ballot, and 28% said they would drop off a completed mail-in ballot.

Confidence in this year’s election among New Jersey voters remains high. Nearly seven in 10, 69%, said they were very or somewhat confident votes would be counted accurately. About three-tenths of voters expressed less faith in the count, with 18% saying they were not too confident and 12% saying they had no confidence at all.