So far, much of the early voting appears to be driven by heightened enthusiasm among Democrats. Of the roughly 3.5 million voters who have cast ballots in six states that provide partisan breakdowns, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by roughly 2 to 1, according to a Washington Post analysis of data in Florida, Iowa, Maine, Kentucky, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Additionally, those who have voted include disproportionate numbers of Black voters and women, according to state data — groups that favor former vice president Joe Biden over President Trump in recent polls. [snip]
...[T]he early numbers are proving to be larger than even Democrats predicted. Three out of four voters in Pennsylvania who have returned their ballots, for instance, are registered Democrats. In increasingly Democratic Virginia, where early voting began in September with hours-long lines in suburban Washington, nearly 1.7 million voters had cast ballots by Wednesday, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project — more than triple the number who voted early or by mail overall in 2016. In Kentucky, nearly 70 percent of mail ballots cast have come from registered Democrats.
In Georgia, so many people were determined to vote in person at the first chance of early voting Monday that they withstood lines that lasted throughout the day. A record 242,000 people voted in the first two days.
Before you start thinking, "Yeah, but a lot of those votes won't be tallied until after November 3, giving would- be autocrat Donald "Mango Mussolini" Trump precious time to monkey with the election," check this out:
...[S]ome potentially pivotal results are expected shortly after polls close, according to a Post analysis of early vote totals and state rules governing mail balloting. Thanks to surges in early and absentee voting, looser rules for processing and counting mail ballots, and active preparation by election officials, voters in critical states such as Florida and North Carolina can expect to see advanced results on election night, if everything goes to plan.
In North Carolina, for instance, state officials plan to release preliminary returns from early in-person and mail voting shortly after polls close on Nov. 3, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time. State officials in Florida expect to release similar returns at 8 p.m. and in Arizona two hours after that.
Combined, those three states will deliver 55 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Let's look at races in battleground Georgia and Ohio:
Former Vice President Jo Biden has pulled ahead of President Donald Trump in Georgia, and the candidates are statistically tied in Ohio, according to new Quinnipiac University polls of likely voters released on Wednesday.The Georgia poll also shows Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock leading against the Republican incumbents in the state's races for U.S. Senate.Biden holds a 7-point lead in Georgia, 51 percent to Trump’s 44 percent, with 4 percent of likely voters undecided in the state. Last month, Quinnipiac polls showed the race for the state was too close to call, with Biden at 50 percent and Trump at 47 percent. The Real Clear Politics polling average, by contrast, has Biden leading by only four-tenths of 1 percent in Georgia.
How about battleground North Carolina?
North Carolina Democratic Senate hopeful Cal Cunningham leads Sen. Thom Tillis by 4 percentage points in a poll released Wednesday despite being dogged by scathing press coverage for nearly two weeks after his marital infidelity surfaced.
Cunningham thus far appears politically unharmed by the scandal, leading Tillis 41 percent to 37 percent among likely voters in a New York Times/Siena College poll released Wednesday. The poll’s margin of error was plus-or-minus 4.5 percentage points. [snip]
Democrats are also running ahead in North Carolina’s two other major contests, with Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump 46 percent to 42 percent and incumbent Gov. Roy Cooper up 14 percentage points — 51 percent to 37 percent — over Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.
More votes are being cast every day in these states and many others. Keep the foot on the gas and get that turnout, because when more people vote, Democrats win.
(Cartoon: Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
