So far, a total of 8,890,892 People exercised their electoral right by mail or in person. The figure comes from a survey carried out by Professor Michael McDonald, an expert in early voting at the University of Florida Elections Laboratory.
The early voter tracker, which collects information from the public domains of the different states that allow early elections, indicates that some 2,098,475 people cast their vote in person, while 6,756,151 did so by mail. As of today, 55,537,888 ballots have been requested by email.
The analysis carried out by the UF Elections Laboratory points out that, according to the match record, 51% of early votes were cast by Democrats30% were done by Republicans. The remaining percentage corresponds to parties with lower representation.
56.2% of those who voted early, either in person or by mail, were adults over 65 years of age. With 30%, those between 41 and 65 years old followed, while 9.5% were those between 26 and 40 years old. Only 4.3% are between 18 and 25 years old.
Regarding the breakdown by gender, women lead the survey of early voting with 54.8%. While men represent 44.5%. Likewise, non-Hispanic whites make up 60%, while African Americans make up 26.5%.
US elections: what data to look at to analyze early vote participation
“The most important fact to know about early voting is that Election Day Voters Are Markedly Different From Early Voters. In general, early voting is a blue wave and election day is a red wave“explains mcdonald, in reference to the primacy democrat in the advance count on the republicans.
In any case, clarify that if the democrats they lead the early voting, As often happens, that “no guarantee that Republican Election Day voters won’t flood early voting“. However, “If Democrats are losing early voting, as they did in the 2022 Florida midterms, that is almost certainly a sign that Republicans will win.”
The University of Florida professor gives other guidelines to take into account when analyzing electoral participation. On the one hand, the states where voting is done by mail “are the best for observing and predicting participation and winners.” California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington, plus the D.C.are those who make their elections mainly by mail.
In turn, he explains that the moment is important. “Mail voting typically occurs before in-person early voting, and partisans tend to use these two voting methods at different rates. Don’t read too much into the statistics until a generous number of in-person early votes have been cast. We’ll have our best look at the election from early voting a week before Election Day“he says.
Early voting in the US elections
In the 2020 presidential elections, while the COVID-19 pandemic Covid-19 hit the world and the vaccines had not yet been distributed, there were a total of 101,453,111 Americans who voted early. Nails 35,811,062 they did it in person and 65,642,049 through absentee ballot.
Democrats dominated the total early vote with 22,250,979 ballots (44.8%), above the 15,168,587 of Republicans. In the breakdown, it is observed that 41.6% of those who did so in person were Republicans, due to the distrust of voting by mail sown by Donald Trump.
During the elections of the 2016 – perhaps best compared to the current election – some 47,242,753 Americans voted early: 23,024,146 did so in person and 24,218,607 by mail. At that time, 42.0% were Democrats and 34.5% were Republicans.
Finally, further back in time, in the presidential elections of the 2012 There were 46,220,922 early votes.
Source: Ambito
