PA Mail-In Vote Totals: 57% Of Ballots Returned So Far

PENNSYLVANIA — In a presidential election unlike any other in American history, a huge percentage of votes have already been cast more than a week out from Election Day on Nov. 3.

In Pennsylvania, about 3.02 million voters have requested mail-in ballots. More than 57 percent of them have already been returned, according to the latest statistics from the Pennsylvania Department of State made available on Monday afternoon

All told, that means roughly a third of all registered Pennsylvania voters have chosen to vote by mail. There are 9,016,163 total registered voters in the state. If there's a roughly similar voter turnout to 2016, when a little over 6 million Pennsylvanians voted, that would mean roughly half of all ballots are mail-ins.

The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Tuesday, Oct. 27, so the numbers above are unlikely to dramatically change.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of mail-in ballots requested are from Democrats. They account for 1,906,640 of the total ballot applications, while 761,811 Republicans have requested ballots, and third parties and independents account for 349,903.

Just three counties, Philadelphia (422,526), Allegheny (406,765), and Montgomery (269,945), account for more than a third of all of those mail-in applications, as county elections officials work overtime to process, mail-out, and receive an unprecedented number of ballots.

Anticipating potential delays, state Democratic leaders moved to get more time to count ballots. The move was protested by Republicans, but the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld a state court's ruling ballots received up until three days after Election Day can be counted in Pennsylvania.

>>GOP Dominates PA New Voter Registrations: County By County Stats

The age range most likely to request a mail-in ballot is between 62 and 70, statistics show, with more than 59,000 applications received from individuals born in each year from 1950 to 1958. Any older or younger than that, and the number of mail-ins requested trails off sharply. And the numbers for younger voters are very similar: each birth year from 1966 to 2001 saw between 32,000 and 42,000 ballots requested.

Here's the breakdown of the 15 counties with the most mail-in ballot applications as of Monday:

• Philadelphia: 422,526
• Allegheny: 406,765
• Montgomery: 269,945
• Bucks: 187,257
• Chester: 162,305
• Delaware: 147,475
• Lancaster: 105,058
• York: 91,386
• Lehigh: 86,160
• Northampton: 81,306
• Berks: 80,057
• Westmoreland: 72,839
• Luzerne: 70,135
• Dauphin: 63,672
• Cumberland: 58,431