According to the US Election Project, approximately 23.9 million people are eligible to vote. (Representative)
Washington:
A record number of nearly 10 crore Americans have already exercised their right to vote in the presidential election, with an additional six crore likely to be cast on actual election day Tuesday.
According to Michael P McDonald, associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, who heads the American Election Project that follows early, about 16 crore of people voting in a presidential election is a record in itself in terms of turnout after 1900. vote .
According to the US Election Project, approximately 23.9 million people are eligible to vote.
“It seems likely that around 100 million early votes will be cast by the time Tuesday morning’s reports are processed,” McDonald said Monday on the eve of the crucial election. The turnout, he said, will be higher than in 2016, as some states have already exceeded their turnout in 2016 or are close to doing so.
For example, at least three states – Hawaii, Texas and Montana – have already exceeded their turnout in 2016. Other states such as North Carolina, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada and Tennessee have already Witnessed a record-breaking early vote that exceeded more than 90% of their turnout in 2016.
Early votes in the last two elections have looked very democratic, McDonald told CNN in an interview.
“By looking at each state in turn and aggregating the state estimates into a national estimate, I arrive at a total turnout of 160.2 million votes, or 67.0 percent turnout for people eligible to vote, ”he wrote on his blog post on Monday.
According to McDonald, the first votes seem to confirm that there has been a shift towards Democrats since 2016, which should benefit the party’s presidential candidate, Joe Biden. But the swing isn’t even, and some of the closest states in 2016 – Florida and North Carolina – appear to be close again, he said.
Early votes also indicate that unaffiliated voters will participate at higher rates than 2016, he said, adding that those voters are not the same as self-identified independents in the polls.
McDonald said there were 319,588,869 outstanding ballots that were not listed as returned by election officials. There are many unknowns with exceptional mail ballots, so it’s hard to take these numbers at face value, he added.
Election officials in many states have never had to deal with so many postal ballots, so reporting is delayed and inconsistencies in reporting are understandable.
Biden supporter Ajay Jain Bhutoria said a record early vote is a good sign for the Democratic candidate. “Early voting – in person and by mail – has seen an historic turnout across the country: 100 million Americans voted early. At this point in 2016, 50 million Americans had voted, ”he said.
“Trump has to win Florida. That’s the key to his path to victory. If Trump wins Florida, North Carolina and Georgia as he says, Biden still has a viable and clear path to 270. We don’t “We don’t have a single path to victory, we have a broad and offensive map,” Bhutoria added.
According to The Hill newspaper, the unprecedented early voting gave Democrats hope by Tuesday. “Overall, Democrats outperformed Republicans in early voting, after President Trump spent months leading baseless attacks on mail-in ballots,” he said.
However, Republicans and the Trump campaign have expressed confidence that they are in good shape and have claimed the “silent majority” will get them through.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
