Democrats are leading Republicans in early voting totals, more than doubling the number of Republicans who already cast their votes, state data shows.
Democrats currently hold a sizeable advantage in early voting, preliminary data shows. Democrats account for 1.4 million of the roughly 6 million ballots already cast. The number represents more than double the 653,000 ballots registered Republicans cast. However, 3.7 million of those who have already voted are “either unaffiliated with either party or live in states that do not register voters by party,” as the Hill reported, “Demographic modeling by one prominent Democratic firm, TargetSmart, estimates that almost 3 million of all votes cast have come from Democratic voters, compared to about 2.1 million from Republicans.”
According to the University of Florida’s Michael McDonald, an estimated 750,000 people had already cast their vote at this point in the presidency in 2016, representing a monumental shift this election cycle in the era of the Chinese coronavirus.
However, traditional methods may not reflect the true outlook of what could amount to be an unconventional presidential race, given the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) recent data showing that a majority of attendees of President Trump’s rally in Duluth, Minnesota, were not Republicans. Nearly 21 percent were Democrats, specifically:
Our data from the Duluth Rally shows @realDonaldTrump is still bringing in tons of new voters:
60% of attendees were NOT Republican
20.9% were Democrat
17.2% did not vote in 2016
8.4% have not voted in last 4 elections
Thank you, Minnesota!
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) October 1, 2020
The GOP is also experiencing a rise in voter registrations in key swing states, such as Pennsylvania.
As Breitbart News reported:
Since Trump carried the Keystone State narrowly in 2016, Republicans have seen their support grown substantially, according to a voter registration report released in June by Pennsylvania’s Department of State. That report found that between December 2015 and December 2019, the GOP gained approximately 258,705 new registrants. Over the same period, in comparison, Democrats only gained 85,779 new registrants.
Despite the advantage, Democrats still outnumber Republicans in Pennsylvania by more than 800,000 registrants. Although that split seems large, Democrats had an even larger registration advantage in 2016 when Trump bested former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by just 44,292 votes out of more than six million ballots. Trump’s one percent margin of victory, narrow though it was, made him the first Republican to carry Pennsylvania since President George H.W. Bush’s 1988 landslide.
However, the Hill reported that Democrats are currently edging out Republicans in early voting in key swing states, including Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, by a greater margin than 2016. In the Keystone State alone, Democrats comprise an excess of 75 percent of all votes cast:
In Florida, registered Democrats had out-voted registered Republicans by a slim 37 percent to 35 percent margin by this point in 2016. Today, almost 53 percent of votes cast in Florida have come from registered Democrats, while Republicans account for just 28 percent.
In North Carolina, registered Democrats have cast 52 percent of all ballots so far, up from 36 percent four years ago. Registered Republicans account for just 17 percent of the ballots, down from 37 percent in 2016.
Despite the Democrats’ early advantage, Republicans tend to be more inclined to vote in person, particularly as the partisan battle over mass mail-in voting rages on.
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