A flood of Democratic ballots have already been recorded in states with early voting across the nation, more than doubling the number of Republican ballots received so far.
Though there has been speculation that Democratic voters will be more likely to vote by mail in the 2020 General Election than Republican voters, the number of Americans who have cast their vote so far has outstripped the number of early voters by this point in 2016, by 10 fold.
Over 8 million Americans have already cast their votes, which could mean this presidential election sees a record number in voter turnout, according to the United States Elections Project, which compiles election data.
ELECTION 2020 VOTER TURNOUT COULD BREAK RECORD WITH MORE THAN 8M BALLOTS ALREADY CAST
Though five states in the U.S. conduct their voting system largely or entirely through mail-in ballots, including Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Hawaii, none of these states were included in the more than 8 million votes already received.
As of Friday, 1.7 million registered Democrats had returned their ballots, while only 750,000 registered Republican ballots had been received.
Democratic ballots requested are nearly double that of Republican ballots as well, with more than 22 million Democratic ballot requests and just 13 million Republican ballot requests.
An additional 14 million ballots have been requested by voters who have not registered with a specific party.
“We’ve never seen this many people voting so far ahead of an election,” Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who heads the election data website, told Reuters.
TRUMP AND BIDEN SUPPORTERS OUT IN FORCE ACROSS FLORIDA
McDonald has reportedly predicted that due to the surge in voting, the U.S. could see 65 percent of eligible voters turn out for the 2020 presidential election – that means 150 million votes counted and the highest rate in voter turnout in the U.S. is since 1908.
More than 50 million people have requested mail-in ballots this year, according to the data — likely a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump has repeatedly said that mass voter fraud will occur with the increase in voting by mail, but with scant evidence to support his accusations.
Despite his warnings, many states extended their mail in voting system by either opening up early voting sooner, or by extending the deadline past election day to allow postmarked ballots the ability to be counted.
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Florida, which voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential race, is leading the nation with the number ballots already submitted. More than 1.37 million ballots have been cast, over half of which are Democratic ballots.
Virginia and Michigan have also both received almost a million returned ballots.
Megan Henney contributed to this article.
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