Early Voting Tally Across U.S. Reaches 70% of 2016 Total Turnout

 By noon Monday, more than 96 million Americans had already voted, either by mail or early and in person, according to the nonpartisan United States Election Project. That's more than twice the final early vote in 2016, and 70% of the entire vote in 2016.
And when it comes to battleground states, the early turnout is even higher.

In North Carolina, voters comprising more than 95% of the entire 2016 vote there had already cast ballots by midday Monday. In Florida and Georgia, the number was more than 94%. In Arizona, it was nearly 87%, and in Nevada, the number was more than 91%. Texas – a state that became a sleeper battleground this year, going from lean or likely Republican to toss-up status by several forecasting operations, voters are coming out in record drives: By Monday morning, 108% of those who cast ballots early or on Election Day in 2016 had already voted.
In Montana, a state that is not a presidential battleground but where a hard-fought U.S. Senate race is being waged by incumbent GOP Sen. Steve Daines and Democratic nominee Steve Bullock, currently Montana's governor, the early voting turnout by midday Monday was already 99% of the entire 2016 voter turnout.

The high early turnout – enabled by moves many states made this year to help people vote early to avoid standing in line on Election Day during a pandemic – could mean the vote is nearly in. It could also presage yet another record turnout year, with many more people turning out on Election Day.

"If you had asked me six months ago whether we would have 90 million people who had already voted, and then expected 150 to 160 million voters who would have voted in the election, I would have been shocked," Nathaniel Persily, co-director of Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "This is a 100-year flood of voters that we are seeing."
President Donald Trump appears to want the election over before it's done: He proclaimed over the weekend that he was ready with legal challenges starting Tuesday night, even though a number of states will still be counting ballots that were cast by Election Day but not tabulated right away.

"We're going to go in the night of, as soon as that election is over, we're going in with our lawyers," Trump told reporters during a frenetic day campaigning Sunday.

Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller predicted on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that Trump "will be ahead on election night, probably getting 280 electoral (votes) somewhere in that range," and that Democrats will "try to steal it back after the election. So no matter what they try to do, what kind of hijinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense they try to pull off, we're still going to have enough electoral votes to get President Trump re-elected," he said.
In fact, winners of individual states and the overall election are often projected on election night, but the results are not certified until mail-in ballots, including military ballots, are counted.

Biden told supporters during a fundraising call Sunday that the Trump campaign could not thwart the will of voters.

"They're trying to do everything they can to suppress the vote, and they're trying to do everything to convince people it's an illegitimate vote, so they can play games," Biden said. "The president's going to try to – I guess the best way to say it is, as someone suggests – steal this election. But the American people won't be silenced."

While analysts have been parsing the meaning of the enormous early vote, It's impossible to know how people are voting. Texas, for example, does not register people by political party, and there's no guarantee people will vote for their party's candidate. Democrats are cheered by the heavy early turnout on the theory that people who want change are more motivated to get out and vote early.
An analysis by TargetSmart shows that more Republicans than Democrats have voted early in 14 battleground states. But analyses by TargetSmart as well as the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University show that young voters – who are more likely to vote Democratic – have voted early in vastly higher numbers this year than in 2016, especially in states like Texas, North Carolina and Florida.

In Florida, Democrats have been tearing out their collective hair over early numbers showing registered Democrats with a massive lead – around 500,000 votes – in early voting, with the advantage later erased as Republicans showed up early in person to vote.

Veteran Democratic operative Steve Schale, a Florida resident, urged calm among his Democratic compatriots.