The Early-Voting Election
For the first time in U.S. history, a voter is more likely to have voted before Election Day than on the day itself. That’s the takeaway from the massive early voting numbers we’re seeing around the country, as around 100 million people have already voted, according to the U.S. Elections Project. But let’s try to put that figure in perspective. In 2016, close to 40 percent of 137 million voters cast early ballots in some way, whether by mail or in person -- the highest share ever, as the chart below shows.
Yet the FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast estimates that anywhere from 147 million to 168 million people may vote in the 2020 election. So with 100 million or so votes already cast, that means that an overwhelming majority of voters will have voted before Election Day this year.
And the surge in early voting has been driven largely by Democrats, as somewhere around three-fourths of them planned to or already have voted before Election Day, whether by mail or in person, based on recent national polls. By comparison, only a little more than half of Republicans have said the same. In addition, polls suggest that early voting is up across many racial and ethnic groups, but most especially among Black voters, who lean heavily Democratic.