2020 election: Record turnout predicted as nearly four million Americans already voted

Registered Democrats have already requested more than 2.4 million mail-in ballots in Florida

Early numbers indicate that there could be a record turnout for 3 November's presidential election between President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden.

More than 3.8 million US citizens have already voted in the election with four weeks to go until polling day, compared to the 75,000 who had cast their ballot at the same time in 2016, according to the US Elections Project.

The increase in early voting has been driven by an expansion of mail-in-voting, which was pushed for by Democratic officials in order to give citizens a safe way to vote amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Early voting, which has been expanded in numerous states to shorten queues outside polling stations on voting day, has also caused the surge in the figures, according to Reuters.

“We've never seen this many people voting so far ahead of an election,” said Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who also runs the US Elections Project.

“People cast their ballots when they make up their minds, and we know that many people made up their minds long ago and already have a judgement about Trump,” he added to Reuters.

Mr McDonald has predicted that the US will see a record turnout of about 150 million people for November’s election, which would represent 65 per cent of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.

The figures available so far for early and mail-in-voting are only from 31 states, and Mr McDonald expects them to grow rapidly as the other areas’ figures emerge in the next few weeks.

Voting before election day has been increasing in recent years, as the amount of people who cast their ballot in a polling station on the day has seen a steady decline, according to the US Election Assistance Commission.

The total number of early or mail-in votes has more than doubled from nearly 25 million in 2004 to 57 million in 2016, the commission reported.

President Trump has repeatedly railed against mail-in voting, by falsely saying that it will lead to widespread fraud. In July, he said that he might not accept a losing result in November’s election, because “mail-in voting is going to rig” it.

However, his complaints do not appear to have affected Democrats, as their registered voters have more than doubled the amount of mail-in ballots in seven states, while the figures for Republicans has fallen.

In Florida, a crucial battleground state, registered Democrats have requested more than 2.4 million mail-in ballots and returned more than 282,000, while Republicans voters have only asked for 1.7 million and returned 145,000.

In a nationwide poll by Reuters/Ipsos taken last week, five per cent of Democrats nationwide said they had already voted, while only two per cent of Republicans said the same.

The poll also found that around 58 per cent of Democrats nationally planned to vote early in November’s election, compared to just 40 per cent of Republicans voters.

Mr McDonald told Reuters that early voting generally starts strong, then drops off before surging again just prior to the election.

However, his project has found that early voting this year has already totalled nearly 23 per cent of South Dakota’s entire turnout in 2016, while the figure is 17 per cent in Virginia and 15 per cent in Wisconsin.

“That's just nuts,” Mr McDonald said. “Every piece of data suggests very high turnout for this election. I think that's just a given.”

Additional reporting by Reuters