The United States Election Project revealed on Tuesday that early votes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election hit 69.6 million. This surpasses half of the total 137 million ballots recorded in the 2016 presidential election.
The figure was published in the ‘2020 General Election Early Vote Statistics’ website.
Early voters who were interviewed disclosed that the prevalence of the corona virus pandemic influenced their choice to vote ahead. Others stated that the ‘chaos and long wait’ on queues on Election Day influenced their decision.
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The early vote figure revealed that 46.5 million ballots were cast through the mail and 23.1 million through in-person voting.
Prof. Michael McDonald, the Director of U.S. Elections Project, expressed satisfaction with the new development, stating that he had his doubt about
election officials’ willingness to conduct the election amid the pandemic.
‘ There were many concerns about election officials’ ability to conduct an election during a pandemic. Not only are people voting, but they are voting over a longer period of time, thereby spreading out the workload of election officials,” McDonald stated.
The record shows that Democrats were leading Republicans in mail-in voting for states that report party data, while Republicans were leading in voting in person. The 26 million mail-in ballots revealed 51.3 percent votes for democrat and 25.5 percent for Republicans. Republicans surpassed the Domocrats with 41.7 percent in the in-person votes with 36.9 percent for democrats.
Election projects stated that about 30 million requested mail ballots were yet to be returned with the deadline for absentee ballots near. There are over 11 million pending ballots from registered democrats.
At the moment, the data is inconclusive as some states did not differentiate between mail ballots and in-person votes.
Reports have it that republicans are hoping to see through a strong turnout in person.
Peace Omenka
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