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An American voter to vote early – Photo: Reuters
These are the latest statistics on the state of early elections in the US provided by the US Elections Project. Official US Election Day will take place on November 3 and about 235 million US voters at home and abroad are eligible to vote.
Do voters go to the vote register?
The increase in voters who voted early in the 2020 US presidential election is primarily due to the fact that many states have expanded their organization and conducted early voting by mail to prevent the COVID pandemic. 19, ensure health security for both voters and poll workers.
However, there is another equally important cause that, according to Michael McDonald of the University of Florida (USA), who is in charge of the US Electoral Project, is that many voters are eager to make their decisions about the future. policy of the current president of the United States, Donald Trump.
“Until now, we have never seen so many people vote before Election Day,” McDonald told the Reuters news agency.
“People vote when they have their decision, and we know that many people have made a decision long before and also have their own assessment of Mr. Trump,” continued Mr. McDonald.
With this fact, Mr. McDonald predicts that this year the number of voters in the United States will reach a record of about 150 million people. This is also the number equivalent to 65% of voters who can vote; if so, it will be the highest rate since the 1908 election.
According to Mr. McDonald, the snap election data just mentioned has only been collected from 31 US states that held snap elections and had initial statistics. The number of early voters will increase rapidly as more states begin direct early voting and announce the total number of voters who have chosen to vote absentee in the coming weeks.
Value of each popular vote received by US presidents Data: KIM THOA synthesized from Quartz – Charts: T.AT
Chances are still 50/50
With the exception of the six states, all remaining states in the US allow direct early voting. According to the US Election Assistance Committee, if in 2004 a total of nearly 25 million US voters chose to vote early or by mail, by 2016 this number had more than doubled, to 57 million.
Trump has repeatedly criticized vote-by-mail, arguing that this approach could lead to voter fraud. However, many election experts believe that this type of fraud is rare. But perhaps President Trump’s attacks on vote-by-mail are also part of the reason why Republican voters are less or less interested in this method.
A Reuters / Ipsos voter opinion poll conducted in early October found that 5% of Democrats said they had already voted, compared to 2% of Republicans. . The study also noted that about 58% of Democratic voters plan to vote early, compared to just 40% of Republicans.
According to McDonald, early voting activities are typically very active at first, then slow down, and then warm up again just before official election day. In some states, early voting rates have been huge with Election Day still a month away.
In South Dakota, for example, early voting was almost 23% of the total number of voters who voted in 2016 in this state. It was close to 17% in Virginia, and in the battlefield state (where the chances of winning were split evenly between the two candidates) Wisconsin also reached almost 15%.
At this point, many polls show that the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is ahead of Trump, some results even suggest that Biden leads in terms of qualification. voters with up to two digits. However, in some battlefield states, the race is still in a relatively “equal” 50-50 position.
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