More than 51 million Americans have cast early ballots ahead of next week’s national election, according to data published Tuesday.
The University of Florida’s Election Lab reported that 51,354,949 people voted early via in-person voting and mail-in ballots.
Roughly 26.8 million people have gone into polling stations to vote while 24.6 others have voted via mail.
Just over 800,000 more Democrats than Republicans – 9,892,219 to 9,048,267 – have voted early.
About 6.1 million others not affiliated with either major party have also done so.
The Nov. 5 election is a week away, and polling indicates that Vice President Kamala Harris, and her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, are locked in a dead heat, particularly in the seven critical battleground states.
In Michigan, Harris is leading Trump by 5 percent, according to a survey released Tuesday by Susquehanna University Polling and Research. Harris holds 51.7 percent support, compared to Trump’s 46.6 percent.
Harris also holds a narrow 1 percent lead in Arizona –48 to 47 percent, but the situation is reversed in neighboring Nevada where Trump is ahead 48 percent to Harris’ 47 percent, according to CNN’s polling data.
Battleground states are pivotal because the US does not directly elect its presidents. Instead, the process plays out via the Electoral College where 538 representatives cast their ballots in line with their states’ outcomes.
Either candidate needs to secure 270 Electoral College votes to claim victory. Electors are allocated to states based on their population, and most states give all of their electors to whichever candidate wins the state in the general vote.
The winner-take-all model is not followed in Nebraska and Maine. However, they instead allocate their votes proportionally based on their outcomes.
Harris meanwhile urged Americans to write the “next chapter” for their country and reject Trump’s chaos and division as she delivered a powerful closing argument to voters Tuesday against the glowing backdrop of the White House.
The Democratic vice president warned against Trump’s lust for “unchecked power” as she addressed a mass rally at the site where her Republican rival riled up a mob before the deadly January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
But Harris then pivoted to an optimistic vision of the United States’ future, using the setting of the White House lit up against the night behind her as a symbolic pitch to show that she is ready for the presidency.
Crowds stretched from the Ellipse, a park bordering the White House grounds where Harris spoke, all the way back to the Washington Monument, the obelisk towering over the National Mall.
Speaking from behind bulletproof screens next to blue signs saying “Freedom,” Harris warned that the election was a choice between a “country rooted in freedom for every American, or ruled by chaos and division.”
Harris reminded the crowd that Trump stood at the same spot nearly four years ago and “sent an armed mob” to the Capitol.
After Trump urged supporters in a speech there to “fight like hell,” many then marched on the iconic domed seat of government to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory, in an assault that left 140 police officers wounded and shocked the world.
But while her speech began with the dramatic attack on Trump, she soon switched to a recap of her detailed plans to help financially struggling middle-class Americans.
She got one of the biggest cheers when she referred to Republicans seeking to curtail abortion, saying the government should not be “telling women what to do with their bodies.”
Trump has spent the last two days trying to tamp down a firestorm over his weekend rally in New York’s famed Madison Square Garden, at which a warm-up comedian jibed that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.”
Biden on Tuesday came under fire for responding to the comments by appearing to call Trump’s supporters “garbage,” although he later said he was referring to the Republican’s rhetoric.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said on a campaign call for Harris.
Trump called the comments “terrible,” and his running mate J.D. Vance said they were “disgusting.”
In a TV appearance, Trump said the comedian who made the comments about Puerto Rico “probably… shouldn’t have been there.”
Earlier, addressing supporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, however, Trump called the New York event a “love fest,” the same phrase he has used to describe the Capitol riot. With AFP/PNA
