More than 69 million people had already cast their ballots as of last Friday, which is nearly 44% of the total number who voted in the 2020 presidential election. At "close quarters" the battle between two opponents.
HDN Newsroom
A record number of Americans don't wait until Election Day to vote, with more than 69 million people dying. People have, so far, taken advantage of the possibility of early voting.
This increase in early voting suggests a long-term trend accelerated by the pandemic during the 2020 election.
According to the Washington Post, that figure includes 4 million voters in Georgia — or 80% of the total who voted there in 2020. On the battlefields of Arizona and North Carolina, about half of eligible voters have already turned up. And Delaware's number of ballots is higher than ever.
This increase in early voting suggests that a long-term trend accelerated by the pandemic during the 2020 election led to a permanent shift in voting habits, with Election Day increasingly joining the election season.
"Election Day is just the end of voting now," said Barry Bairden, director of the Center for Election Research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Although early voting rates nationwide are not as high as they were at the moment in 2020, they are significantly higher than in 2016 or any previous election year. Some have been surprised by the turnout, especially after former President Donald Trump and many Republicans spent years falsely saying early voting and mail-in voting was less reliable than voting on Election Day.
This year, Trump showed greater openness to early voting, especially in the final days of the campaign.
The number of early ballots is expected to continue to rise before election day. At recent rallies in crucial states, Trump and Harris have pleaded with their supporters and undecided voters to vote early.
In Wisconsin, a swing state, 1.3 million voters had cast their ballots in person or by mail by Friday. This is less than the 1.7 million who participated at the same stage in 2020. Many more voters this time are voting in person instead of by mail.
In Arizona, where early voting has been overwhelmingly popular for decades, about 2.2 million ballots had been cast as of last Friday. This means that about half of the voters had already voted.
In Pennsylvania, an equally critical state, there is traditionally no early voting, but voters can request and vote in person by mail before Election Day. As of Saturday, 1.7 million ballots had been requested, about 56 percent from Democrats, 33 percent from Republicans and 11 percent from unaffiliated or third-party voters.
