Election Lab: Americans Cast 30 Million Votes in First Weeks of Early Voting 

Campaign signs are seen outside an early voting polling place at the Southeast Library, Th
AP Photo/George Walker IV
Wendell Husebø

Americans have already cast 30 million votes in the first weeks of early voting, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

The number of early votes suggests Americans are highly motivated to cast their ballot before Election Day, which saves the Trump and Harris campaigns time and money.

WATCH — CNN’s Enten: Trump May Win the Popular Vote, “He Could Make History”:

Swing state early voting data, which is more valuable than polling, appears to be benefiting former President Donald Trump thus far.

More on Trump’s preliminary lead is here.

Republicans took the lead in cumulative early voting in North Carolina and continued to hold it for a couple of days. The lead is historic in the modern era, political analysts say. The Tar Heel State already passed its 2020 record for the first day of early voting, surpassing the 1 million ballot mark.
The state’s board of elections reported on the data:

As of 8 a.m. Thursday, more than 2 million voters had cast ballots in the 2024 general election in North Carolina, according to preliminary State Board of Elections data.

The ballots cast number represents a statewide turnout of about 26% of North Carolina’s nearly 7.8 million registered voters.

…

Through the end of the day Wednesday, nearly 1,888,000 voters had cast ballots in person during the first seven days of the early voting period. That’s an increase of 6.6% over 2020, when more than 1,761,000 voters had cast ballots after seven days of in-person voting. Factoring in increases in registered voters between 2020 and 2024, in-person early voting is up 0.4% over 2020.

Republicans also gained the early vote lead in Nevada for several days now, which appears to be a historically unusual trend. Republicans lead Democrats by about 20,000 ballots cast. Wednesday night data showed 20 percent of the Silver State-registered voters cast a ballot, for a total of 397,795 votes.

Breitbart News’s Matt Boyle reported Tuesday on Nevada’s early vote:

Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent, reporting on the early vote numbers showing a GOP lead, flashed the warning to Democrats late Monday evening out west. Ralston noted that since the rise of the political machine that the late former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid built for Democrats this has never happened.

“Republicans lead statewide in Nevada after three days of early voting and mail ballot counting,” Ralston wrote in a blog post on his outlet’s website recounting the first few days of voting in the Silver State. “This has not happened in a presidential year in The Reid Machine Era, which encompasses the races since 2008. This could signal serious danger for the Dems and for Kamala Harris here.”

The key for Democrats to regain their footing in the coming days, Ralston noted, will be building up a bigger “firewall” of mail votes in Clark County, which includes the most populous city in the state Las Vegas. But for now, Republicans have in his words “reduced” that “Clark firewall to almost nothing” and are running up the score in more rural counties.

In Georgia, the state’s secretary of state announced its first-day voting totals (2,368,812) were more than doubled North Carolina’s record number (more than 1 million). More than 25 percent of the electorate have already voted, according to the secretary of state. The Peach State does not track early vote party affiliation, but more than half of early voter data suggests women represent about 55 percent of the early vote.

The Hill reported a breakdown of the nationwide trends, according to Election Lab:

Of those who have voted by party registration in certain states, 40.8 percent or nearly 6.7 million people were Democrats, compared to 35.8 percent or about 5.8 million who were Republicans, the data revealed.

Female voters outpaced male voters by more than 10 percentage points, 54.2 percent to 43.9 percent, in Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia, according to the lab’s data.

The largest group of voters by age, per the data, were voters over 65 years old. They made up 45.6 percent of the early ballots in Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Voters aged 41 to 65 years old came in second, accounting for 36.4 percent, the data showed.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.