21 million Americans have already voted in US presidential elections

Two weeks before the US presidential elections, as many as 21 million Americans have already cast their vote in the middle of an intense election campaign between the two candidates: Vice president Kamala Harris from the Democratic Party and former president Donald Trump from the Republican Party.

According to data from the Election Lab at the University of Florida, about 7.8 million votes have come in through early in-person methods, while the remaining 13.3 million-plus votes have been cast through mail ballot.

Unlike the Indian general elections, where campaigning stops 36 hours before the start of the voting, both campaigning and voting continue in parallel for about four weeks at least in the US.

The US presidential elections are scheduled to be held on 5 November.

Political pundits say the winner would be decided on the results of the polls in seven battleground states: Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.

Early voting is a unique provision for American voters, wherein electors can cast their vote by either asking for a mail-in-ballot — which are in some ways comparable to India’s postal ballots — or they go out and vote at designated polling booths that in many states open up a few weeks ahead of the actual polling day.

According to the Election Lab at the University of Florida, the early voting percentage is just 1.7 per cent among Asian Americans. However, in many places, several Indian Americans were seen standing in line to cast their vote.

Chanchal Jhingan, 88, and her daughter Vandana Jhingan stood up in line on 21 October to exercise their right to vote in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois.

In a Democratic bastion, Vandana said she voted for someone who can “Make America Great Again”.

Jitendra R. Diganvkar encountered a huge line when he went to vote in Texas. “This is full parking. People are coming every minute. I recommend every US citizen who re-registers to vote,” he said.

According to the New York Times, more Republicans are doing early voting than expected.

“They (the Republicans) have done a better job of turning out their voters to vote early,” Sam Almy, a Democratic political strategist who tracks early ballots in Arizona, told the daily.

“I think they realised that early voting is easy and convenient: It turns out your voters quickly, and they don’t have to gamble on turning out all their voters on Election Day,” he said.

“It’s a remarkable turnabout from four years ago when Trump had thoroughly demonised every method of voting that didn’t occur in person on Election Day,” the daily reported.

Per Election Lab, among in-person early voters, 41.3 Republicans have voted so far as against 33.6 per cent Democrats.

The two parties, Democrats (20.4 per cent) and Republicans (21.2 per cent), are almost neck-and-neck when it comes to mail-in ballots.

‘With early voting turnout breaking records in key battleground states, a large number of Republican voters are showing up, potentially paving the way for a win by former president Donald Trump, according to veteran political journalist Mark Halperin,’ reported Newsweek.

One-fourth of the voters in the battleground state of Georgia have already voted. According to the office of Georgia’s secretary of state, more than 1.84 million Georgians have cast their ballot.

“We are almost pushing 1.4 million who’ve already voted early or who we’ve accepted their absentee ballots. We’re probably gonna see a record turnout, early voting, probably 65, maybe 70 per cent of all Georgians are going to vote that way, but they have a free will choice on how to vote,” Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger told CBS News in an interview.