Early US voting surges, bringing tally to 45 per cent of 2016 vote more than a week before Election Day
- Early voting in battleground states Florida, Georgia and North Carolina already amounts to more than half of 2016 totals
- Texas, where early voting began a week before many other states, has tallied votes representing 82 per cent of its 2016 election totals
Early voting in the US presidential election is surging, with a tally of 61.3 million votes by Monday amounting to nearly half of the 2016 total cast more than a week before Election Day.
Some of the highest turnouts are emerging in battleground states including Florida, Georgia and North Carolina – where the percentages reached 62.8 per cent, 66.1 per cent and 66.5 per cent, respectively – according to US Elections Project, a database maintained by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald.
Early, in-person voting in a presidential election is new for some states, including New York, which began its first ever for a presidential election this weekend. But it has been spurred by the need to maintain social distancing amid a pandemic that remains out of control in many parts of the US.
Divisions between President Donald Trump and his challenger Joe Biden, fuelled to a degree by their differences over how aggressively the federal government should be trying to rein in the contagion that, according to Johns Hopkins University, has killed about 225,000 Americans, has helped to polarise the US electorate.
Voting stations in New York City, for example, were marked by long voter queues, some of which snaked around entire city blocks.