Election Day 2024 arrived Tuesday – with tens of millions of Americans having already cast their ballots.
Those include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina, and other battleground states that could decide the winner.
The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust – over 4 million voters – that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls.
Advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast – slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier.
That’s driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.
Despite long lines in some places and a few hiccups that are common to all elections, early in-person and mail voting proceeded without any major problems.
That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene.
State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water, and washed-out roads.
By the time early voting in North Carolina had ended on Saturday, over 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state — had cast their ballots.
As of Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even stronger at 59% of registered voters, state election board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said.
