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WASHINGTON (REUTERS) – Americans are rushing to cast their votes ahead of the Nov. 3 election at an unprecedented pace, early voting numbers show, indicating a possible record turnout in the showdown between President Donald Trump. and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
With less than four weeks to go to Election Day, more than 6.6 million Americans have already voted, more than 10 times the number they had at this time in 2016, according to the U.S. Elections Project, which compiles data. early voting.
The change has been driven by an expansion of early and mail voting in many states as a safe way to cast a vote during the coronavirus pandemic and a desire to influence Trump’s political future, said Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who manages the project.
“We have never seen so many people voting before the election,” McDonald said in an interview earlier this week.
“People cast their votes when they make a decision, and we know that a lot of people made a decision a long time ago and already have a judgment on Trump.”
The initial increase has led McDonald’s to predict a record turnout of around 150 million, representing 65 percent of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.
Biden leads Trump in national opinion polls, although polls in crucial battlefield states indicate a tighter race.
The figures reported so far come from 34 states plus the District of Columbia. All but a half dozen states allow some level of early voting in person.
The percentage of voters who cast their ballots on a voting machine on Election Day had already declined steadily before this year, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency.
The total number of early or mailed votes more than doubled from nearly 25 million in 2004 to 57 million in 2016, it said, representing an increase of one in five of all votes cast to two in five all votes cast.
Trump has criticized the vote-by-mail, making unsubstantiated accusations that it leads to fraud. Experts have said that this type of fraud is rare.
Those attacks by the president have shown signs of depressing Republican interest in voting by mail. Democrats have more than doubled the number of ballots returned by mail by Republicans in seven states reporting voter registration data by party, according to the Election Project.
A Reuters / Ipsos national poll conducted last week found that 5 percent of Democrats nationwide said they had already voted compared to 2 percent of Republicans. About 58 percent of Democrats planned to vote early compared to 40 percent of Republicans.
McDonald said early voting generally starts out strong, then drops before rising just before the election. But in some states, participation rates have already skyrocketed within a month.
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