Americans flood the early vote

An anxious America, weary from a vitriolic campaign season and worried about the state of the nation’s democracy, is voting with determination, with roughly 75 million people having cast ballots in the early voting period. In North Carolina, nearly 4.5 million voters set an early in-person voting record in the state amid devastation from Hurricane Helene. Georgia voters also set a record with 4 million voters casting an early ballot. In Pennsylvania, 1.7 million people voted by mail amid increasingly caustic litigation over whose mail ballots should count. Nine states have seen more than 50 per cent of eligible voters already vote.

Projections from early voting indicate that the overall turnout for the election will probably be between the roughly 60 per cent of eligible voters who turned out in 2016 and the two-thirds of eligible voters who voted in 2020, according to Michael McDonald, a professor of politics at the University of Florida who tracks voting. While overall turnout is likely to be slightly lower than the modern high-water mark set in the 2020 election, it still puts the country on pace for a historical high compared with almost all other previous years. — NYT