Early voting is in full force in many states throughout the country, including in some key battleground states like Georgia. As hundreds of thousands of voters cast their ballots before November, certain trends are starting to emerge that could provide some decisive insights ahead of Election Day.
A new report by NBC News takes a deep dive into Virginia's early voting numbers to provide a look into the early scenario. While the Old Dominion state is not considered a battleground territory, it is one of the states with the earliest kickoff of absentee voting
The first two weeks of voting by mail and in-person voting may show that the gap between Democrats and Republicans exercising their right before Election Day may be smaller this year than 2020.
In the last presidential election, about 2.8 million, or 63% of the roughly 4.5 million total votes in Virginia were cast before Election Day. However, there were substantial differences in the number of early votes based on a city's or a county's partisan lean. In the ones that strongly favored Democratic candidates, 70% of voters cast absentee ballots. In Republican-leaning cities and counties, the figure was closer to 50% according to NBC News.
By comparison, so far, absentee voting has occurred in places that tend to support Republicans than places that tend to lean Democrat.
One way to capture that trend is by calculating the percentage of 2020 votes in an area that have already been cast in 2024 via absentee ballots, NBC News explained. That ranges from about 12% in the areas that are most supportive of Democrats to almost 22% in those areas that lean toward Republicans.
But is this an indication that Democrats will be turning out less than Republicans? Not necessarily.
In fact, data provided to NBC by TargetSmart, a voter data vendor, shows that only about 21% of the early in-person ballots and 39% of the mail ballots had been cast at this point in the 2022 midterms.
The latest report comes as other states start early voting across the country.
In Georgia, for instance, a key battleground ahead of November, early voting kicked off this week amid a plethora of voting controversies and regulations by the state.
But despite attempts of voter suppression, more than 300,000 Georgians cast their ballots on Tuesday, the first day of early voting, doubling the state's Day 1 record. On Wednesday, there were no signs that the pace was slowing down, with nearly 300,000 more people voting, according to the Washington Post.
Gabriel Sterling, a top state elections official, posted on X that the numbers meant "that we will break past the half a million votes cast today. That's 10% of the turnout we saw in 2020. Big numbers!" By day's end, the two-day total stood at 581,902.
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