62 Million And Counting: Americans Are Breaking Early Voting Records : NPR - 0 views
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"Normally in a presidential election, we have anywhere from 68% to 73% turnout," Rodriguez told NPR. "We're expecting 80% turnout this year based on the voting numbers that have come in."
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carolinehayter on 27 Oct 20That's a huge number even if it's only for Florida
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Among states that are reporting data, voters have requested 87 million mail ballots, according to McDonald, and roughly 41 million ballots have been returned by mail.
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Democrats currently hold a roughly 2-to-1 advantage in returned mail-in ballots in states with party registration.
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"Usually the story for a typical election in recent years has been that the early vote is Democratic and the Election Day vote is Republican," he said. "And it looks as though we're going to have the same story this year, and we're going to have to wait to see what happens with that Election Day vote before we can really say what's going to happen."
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"Typically, when we talk about early voting, we're talking about Democrats voting in person early and Republicans voting by mail," McDonald said. "This election, those roles are reversed. But when you look at the overall electorate, there are many more people voting by mail than in person early in most states."
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The shift could be at least in part due to President Trump's consistent false claims that voting by mail leads to widespread fraud, whereas Joe Biden's campaign has been aggressive in urging supporters to vote early, whether in person or by mail.
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the numbers of young people voting early have skyrocketed, particularly in states that will be critical for Biden and Trump to win, such as Michigan, Florida and North Carolina.
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Young people could wield significant political power: Millennials and some members of Generation Z make up 37% of eligible voters, roughly the same share of the electorate that baby boomers and older voters ("pre-boomers") make up, according to census data analyzed by the Brookings Institution.
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As early voting began, the pent-up voting interest showed as long lines formed in states such as Georgia and Texas, with some voters waiting for hours. Election officials had warned that some in-person voting locations would face longer lines as some jurisdictions have had to consolidate polling places and adjust logistics to accommodate social distancing during the pandemic.
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"There is no place in the United States of America where two-, three-, four-hour waits to vote is acceptable and just because it's happening in a blue state doesn't mean it's not voter suppression," she said. "If this was happening in a swing state, there would be national coverage."
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That's some 15 million more pre-election votes than were cast in the 2016 election, according to the U.S. Elections Project
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With about a week still remaining until Election Day, Americans have already cast a record-breaking 62 million early ballots, putting the 2020 election on track for historic levels of voter turnout.
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In 2019, McDonald predicted that 150 million people would vote in 2020's general election, which would be a turnout rate of about 65% — the highest since 1908. But he's going back to the drawing board. "I have increasingly been confident that 150 [million] is probably a lowball estimate," he said Monday. "I think by the end of the week I'll be upping that forecast."
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"It's good news, because we were very much concerned about how it would be possible to conduct an election during a pandemic," he said, citing concerns that mail-in ballots would be returned by voters en masse at the conclusion of the early voting period, overwhelming election officials. "Instead, what appears to be happening is people are voting earlier and spreading out the workload for election officials."
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Some states are quickly approaching their 2016 vote totals. In Texas, for example, nearly 7.4 million early votes had been cast as of Sunday, marking 82% of the state's total votes in 2016.
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Montana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia have also reached 65% or more of their 2016 vote totals.