2 weeks Ago By Jack Phillips
With Election Day just over a week away and a flurry of presidential campaign stops scheduled, nearly 44 million people have voted early in-person or via mail-in ballots so far. Ahead of the Nov. 5 contest, the trend of registered Republican voters going to the polls earlier and returning more mail-in ballots appears to be continuing, which has eaten into Democrats’ early voting totals, data show.
And for early in-person voting, Republicans have a 600,000-vote advantage over Democrats. But Democrats have a 4.8 million advantage in terms of mail-in ballot returns so far, data show.
Democrats have a 371,000-vote advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania, which is reporting only mail-in ballots, data show. Unaffiliated voters make up about 130,203 ballots cast, while Democrats have cast 761,526 and Republicans have cast 390,118 votes. Nevada figures show that 255,805 registered Republicans have voted, compared with 223,729 for Democrats.
Another 164,519 have voted who are unaffiliated. Georgia does not report party affiliation, but data show that more than 2.8 million people have cast their ballots so far.
That’s more than half the total cast during the entire 2020 election, officials say. From Labor Day, Sept. 2, through this past weekend, both campaigns have made 43 visits to Pennsylvania, which is more than their visits to Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia combined.
Both campaigns have visited those three states 40 times since Sept. 2. Among battleground states, Pennsylvania has the highest number of electoral votes, with 19.
There has been a stark contrast in Wisconsin: Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz visited the state eight times between Oct. 14 and Oct.
27, compared to just one visit by former President Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) during that span. The Republicans are headed back to Wisconsin this week, including for a rally in Milwaukee.
In addition to the two candidates’ activity, tech billionaire Elon Musk has held multiple events in Pennsylvania, offering $1 million prizes each day to registered voters in swing states who fill out a survey. On Monday, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner filed a lawsuit against Musk and his America PAC, asking a state judge to shut down his election-related sweepstakes. Harris and Trump are aggressively competing in just seven swing states that will ultimately decide the election.
They are the three so-called “Blue Wall” states—Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—in addition to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. Harris spent Sunday in Pennsylvania, and she is next scheduled to go to Michigan. And after Tuesday’s closing argument in Washington, she plans to visit North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Wednesday alone.
She heads to Nevada and Arizona on Thursday. Trump is booked to host at least one rally every day next week: Monday in Georgia, Tuesday in Pennsylvania, Wednesday in Wisconsin, Thursday in Nevada, Friday in Wisconsin again, and Saturday in Virginia. However, these schedules are likely to change based on the campaigns’ intelligence on the ground.
Over the past weekend, Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, while Harris made multiple stops in Pennsylvania..
