Early voting on pace to set midterm records nationwide, including Georgia

Early voting for the midterm elections appears to be on pace to break records set in 2018. According to statistics from Edison Research and Catalist obtained by CNN, 5.8 million people have cast ballots so far in 39 states. At this same point in 2018, 5 million people had voted.

The data shows Democrats are casting far more ballots than Republicans in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Arizona. But that aligns with recent trends that Democrats vote early, while Republicans vote on election day.

For instance in Pennsylvania, Democrats have cast 73% of the early ballots while Republicans are at just 19%. In Arizona, 44% of the ballots cast have come from Democrats while 33% have come from Republicans.

According to Georgia’s Secretary of State’s office, nearly 840,000 people have cast a ballot, that’s almost 60% higher from the 526,000 at this time in 2018. The state is on track to surpass a million votes cast by Tuesday.

The voter turnout success in Georgia is being celebrated by both the state’s Democratic and Republican leaders in the middle of heated gubernatorial and Senate elections. 

“It has been fantastic to see, among Georgians, record early voting turnout every single day this week,” Republican National Committee Georgia Spokesperson Garrison Douglas told Fox 5 Atlanta.

“For the past couple of cycles, Georgians have seen how powerful their voices are,” Democratic Party of Georgia spokesperson Chrystian Woods told the station.

But the big increases aren’t happening everywhere. North Carolina is pretty much exactly the same compared to 2018, and Ohio saw less than a 3% increase.