More than 100 million ballots were cast before Election Day

These votes represent more than 47% of registered voters nationwide. Twenty-one states and Washington, DC, have seen more than half of their registered voters cast ballots already.

Pre-Election Day voting has skyrocketed nationwide during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. At least six states, including Texas, Hawaii, Nevada, Washington, Arizona and Montana have surpassed their total turnout from the 2016 general election in recent days.

In an additional seven states, the pre-election vote represents at least 90% of their 2016 total vote – North Carolina, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee.

Nationwide, the 100.2 million ballots already cast represents 73% of the more than 136.5 million ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election.

very large proportion of Americans are voting early and in most states, election officials can tee up those ballots to generate results quickly after polls close. So in contested states like Florida and Texas, we may have a very good idea early in the night how things will go.

Early results that pop up shortly after the polls close might look very different from the final outcome, because of unprecedented levels of mail-in ballots and early voting due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, supporters of Democratic nominee Joe Biden have shown a strong preference for mail-in voting. Most of President Trump's supporters say they want to vote on Election Day. States count these different types of votes in very different ways.