More than 99.6 million total ballots cast as of early Tuesday morning insinuate a record volume for this year's run compared to the about 50 million early votes cast in the 2016 election, according to data from the United States Elections Project.
That number of early ballots cast so far represents 72.3% of the total national voter turnout in 2016, and the total number of ballots cast includes nearly 64 million mail-in ballots and more than nearly 36 million in-person ballots.
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More than 138 million people voted in 2016 -- the bulk of which voted in-person on Election Day. The coronavirus pandemic, though, has created record requests for mail-in ballots and participation in early voting.
"It appears likely that around 100 million early votes will be cast by the time Tuesday morning reports are processed," Elections Project founder and University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald said in a November 1 blog post on the project website.
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McDonald said that he had been predicting for the past year that 2020 would have a record number of voters, estimating 150 million, but that he can now anticipate even more.
"Examining each state in turn, and rolling up the state estimates to a national estimate, I arrive at a total turnout rate of 160.2 million votes, or a turnout rate for those eligible to vote of 67.0%," he wrote.
McDonald wrote that in 2016, 40% of voters voted early. That number would have to be larger in 2020, he said, because otherwise, that would mean 250 million people would vote when he thinks that only 239 million are eligible.
"One strong signal is that turnout will be higher than in 2016," he said, "because some states have already exceeded their 2016 turnout or are close to doing so."
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Several states have already exceeded its 2016 voter volume, including Texas, Montana and Washington. Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon and North Carolina have reached more than 95% of their 2016 ballot numbers.
California has seen the largest voter turnout so far; more than 12 million Californians have cast ballots so far. Texas and Florida track just behind with 9.7 million and 8.9 million ballots cast, respectively. North Carolina has already recorded 4.5 million ballots cast.
McDonald previously told us that he "expected some things to be different since states changed their laws" to help voters amid the pandemic. More than 92 million absentee ballots have been sent to voters so far this year.
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