Almost half the people who voted for president in 2016 have already cast an early vote with only a week to go before Election Day.
During an interview with NPR on Monday, University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, who spearheads the U.S. Elections Project database, said early voting figures are breaking all-time records.
“We’ve already passed any raw number of early votes in any prior election in U.S. history,” McDonald said.
Around 136 million votes were cast in the 2016 election. As of Tuesday evening, the database showed more than 69 million people have voted in this election cycle so far.
Of the nearly 70 million early votes cast so far this year, more than 45 million have been mail-in ballots, while close to 25 million have been placed at the polling station.
The three states that have recorded the highest early voting totals are California, Texas, and Florida.
McDonald said the early voting records are not necessarily positive results for Democrats, who have pushed early voting measures to counteract the highly contagious coronavirus.
“I strongly caution that Democrats’ unprecedented high levels of early voting should not be taken as an indicator of the final election results,” McDonald wrote on the “Frequently Asked Questions” page of the U.S. Elections Project.
