By Elishya Perera
WASHINGTON DC, USA (CWBN)_ With just nine days left for Election Day, pre-election voting for the 2020 Presidential Election surpassed all 2016 early ballots yesterday (Oct 25), owing to the surge in in-person early voting in big states.
As voters try to avoid crowded places on 3rd November amid the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, millions of early votes piled on top of the mail ballots arriving at election offices.
According to a survey of election officials in all 50 states, as of yesterday, more than 58.7 million Americans have voted so far, while around 58.3 million pre-election ballots were cast in 2016.
Meanwhile, 54% of the 58.7 million votes already cast have come from some of the competitive states, which play a significant role in determining who will occupy the White House for the next four years.
Even though Democrats held the lead in initially balloting, however, Republicans appear to be narrowing the gap. On 15th October, Democrats registrants cast 51% of all ballots reported, while 25% was from Republicans. Yesterday (Oct 25), Democrats had a slightly smaller lead, with 51% to 31%.
Analysts believe the higher Democratic turnout in early voting put extra pressure on the Trump campaign to push Republican voters out in the final week, including Election Day.
In Florida, for example, Democrats have a 596,000 advantage in mail ballots, while the GOP has only a 230,000 voter edge in-person. Also in Nevada, even though Democrats usually dominate in-person early voting, Republicans only have a 42,600 edge in person, while Democrats have outvoted Republicans by a 97,500 margin by mail.
Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, noted that the Republicans have to vote at some point, since everyone cannot be forced through a vote center on Election Day. “Are you going to expect all those Republicans to stand in line for eight hours?” he observed.
On the other hand, the surge in GOP voters showing up for early in-person voting, as opposed to mail ballots, is an indication that many heeded President Donald Trump’s unfounded warnings about mail-voting fraud.
As the Covid-19 pandemic has increased reliance on mail-in voting, the Trump campaign launched a massive legal effort to challenge the practice in three of the nine states sending ballots to voters: New Jersey, Montana and Nevada.
However, on Thursday (Oct 22), U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp ruled that Trump’s claims of potential voter fraud in New Jersey are “largely conjectural, hypothetical and lacking in imminence.” Meanwhile, Nevada’s decision to mail ballots to voters was also upheld in court, as the Republicans had “failed to allege a substantial risk of voter fraud” in the state. The state of Montana followed suit, while the ruling was also upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the meantime, accounting for around 25%, new or infrequent voters have also cast significantly more ballots and make up a greater share of the pre-Election Day vote, than they did around the same time in 2016. So far similar shares of them are registering Democratic and Republican.
This large proportion of new and infrequent voters in the pre-election voting have led analysts to speculate that more than 150 million total votes will be cast this year, possibly the highest turnout in a US presidential election since 1908.
