Early Voting in Swing State Georgia Brings in Half of 2020 Election

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As of Monday morning, more than 2.8 million people had voted so far in the Peach State, data show.

Record early voting in battleground state Georgia has already brought out more than half of the total turnout seen in 2020, officials said.

As of Monday morning, more than 2.8 million people had voted so far, with just eight days to go before the General Election, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab website. In 2020, just under 5 million people cast ballots across the state.

“So over 50 percent of the turnout for 2020 has already voted in Georgia,” Gabriel Sterling, the Georgia secretary of state’s chief operating officer, wrote on Friday on social media. “So for people like Joe Biden & Stacey Abrams, you were wrong saying we had voter suppression here. It’s easy to register & vote in Georgia … and really hard to even try to cheat. Great job by our voters & counties..”

Sterling was referring to Democrats’ criticism of 2021 voting laws that were passed in Georgia by the state Legislature and later signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp.

Earlier this month, Sterling wrote on social media that Georgia broke its record when the first day of early voting opened, writing that some 328,000 votes were cast on that day. In 2020, the previous record was set when 136,000 people voted early.

In Georgia, a majority of ballots cast early in 2024 are from in-person voting rather than via mail, a practice that was more commonplace across the state and the rest of the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic and associated rules during the 2020 election.

During the 2020 contest, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was certified as the winner of Georgia by a slim margin over then-President Donald Trump, prompting allegations of fraud across the Peach State that led to multiple lawsuits.

Georgia is one of many states that does not report party affiliation for early voters. However, Republicans are leading Democrats in North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada, three other battleground states, in early voting. Democrats are ahead by about 300,000 early votes in Pennsylvania as of Monday, while Wisconsin and Michigan do not report party affiliation.

The last day to vote early in Georgia is Saturday, Nov. 2. The General Election will be held on Nov. 5.

In polls, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is leading Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia by about 2 percentage points, according to an aggregate provided by RealClearPolitics.

Both Harris and Trump have made visits to the Peach State in recent days, with the vice president appearing at a church event in the Atlanta area. There, she made a plea for the state’s black voters to go to the polls.

“There is so much at stake right now,” she said at the Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro. “Our strength is not based on who we beat down, as some would try and suggest. Our strength is based on who we lift up. And that spirit is very much at stake in these next 16 days.”

Trump appeared at an event in Duluth, Georgia, and told his supporters to vote on Election Day or via an early ballot. “Just vote, whichever way you want to do it,” Trump said at the event on Oct. 24, which was organized by conservative host Charlie Kirk and the group he founded.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.