The Effects of Increased Access to Mail-In and Absentee Voting Due to COVID-19 on Voter Turnout in the 2020 Presidential Election

With new voting policies in the fallout from the 2020 election, it is critical to understand their effects on voter turnout. I use a difference-in-differences approach to study effects of absentee voting policies from the fall of 2020 on voter turnout in four states. Using county-level data on the 2008-2020 presidential elections, I estimate turnout based on the county’s policy for the 2020 election. I use three sets of states, and I find positive effects on voter turnout for all three sets, two of which are significant. The results from the Montana policy hold through the robustness checks