Why Election Day has irreversibly changed
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"I Voted Early" stickers at a polling station in Lansing, Michigan on Aug. 1. Photo: Emily Elconin/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Although Election Day is weeks away, thousands of Americans nationwide have already cast their votes. Vote counting delays due to mail-in or absentee voting are also expected to drag out the declaration of winners in key swing states.
Why it matters: The popularity and prevalence of early voting has rendered Election Day an outdated concept — for much of the country, the 2024 race countdown would be better described as election month.
- Early voting in person or by mail has exploded over the past 24 years. According to the Center for Election Innovation and Research, in the year 2000, only 24 states offered citizens the ability to vote before Election Day. In 2024, 47 states do so.
- Early in-person voting is underway in nearly two dozen states, per USA Today. More than two dozen others will begin casting ballots over the next two weeks.
The big picture: More than half of voters plan to vote early in the election, according to a new NBC News poll released this week.
- A majority of voters who have already voted early or are planning to do so support Harris. Most voters planning to vote on Election Day favor Trump, according to the poll.
- In 2020, 60% of Democrats reported voting by mail, compared to 32% of Republicans, according to a 2021 study from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
State of play: Early voting in Georgia got off to a record-breaking start on Tuesday, with more than 328,000 votes cast via early voting and absentee ballots.
- Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer of the Georgia Secretary of State's Office, wrote on X that the state "crossed the 1,000,000 voter mark" around 11:50am ET Friday and saw the "Biggest turnout ever for a General Election Saturday," with 102,519 voters casting ballots as of 1:30pm.
- In Michigan, more than 1 million absentee ballots have already been returned out of the more than 2 million that were requested, according to the Michigan Department of State's voting dashboard.
- In Pennsylvania, one of the most critical battleground states in the election, 791,804 mail and absentee ballots have been cast, per the state's Daily Mail Ballot Report.
- The Minnesota Secretary of State's Office announced Thursday that 337,633 ballots had already been accepted.
Between the lines: The presidential race is expected to come down to a small percentage of voters in just six states.
What to watch: Democrats typically enjoy an advantage in mail-in voting results, having been quick to welcome vote-by-mail efforts in 2020.
- Indeed, ballot returns in states like Pennsylvania and New Mexico are skewing heavily Democrat, per the figures released by the states.
Trump spent years dismissing early voting as "corrupt," but he and several GOP groups have now been more friendly toward mail-in voting.
Go deeper: Inside Trump's stunning flip-flop on early voting
