Georgia voters continue to break early voting records as the November 5 election inches closer.
State officials said on Thursday that over half of Georgia’s active voters have cast a ballot in the 2024 election, including over 3.4 million who have voted early in person. Another 230,608 absentee ballots have been returned, bringing the state’s total voter turnout to just under 3.7 million.
“Georgia voters know we’ve made it easy to cast a ballot,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement Thursday. “It’s really that simple.”
This year’s turnout has crushed previous years for Georgia. In 2020, with just five days left before Election Day, around 2.3 million voters had cast a ballot in person. In the 2022 midterms, around 1.9 million Georgians had voted at this point in the election.
The Peach State is touted to be among the tipping points in the presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Most polls show Trump holding a slight lead over his Democratic opponent, although the gap is extremely tight. Trump lost Georgia in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden by just 0.3 percent of the overall vote.
The counties in Georgia that have seen the most voter turnout are ones that Trump won by a large margin four years ago. According to Raffensperger’s office, Towns County leads the state in voter turnout, with 69 percent of active voters already casting a ballot. In 2020, Trump dominated the rural county in northeast Georgia, 80 percent to 19.4 percent.
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Other Georgia counties with high turnout rates include Oconee (65.5 percent), Rabun (64.4 percent), Dawson (64.1 percent), Forsyth (63.6 percent), Fayette (63.2 percent), Union (63.1 percent) and Greene (62.3 percent). All seven counties voted for Trump in 2020.
Republican voters have been turning out in higher numbers during early voting this election than in previous years, in part due to Trump’s campaign flipping the script and encouraging supporters to get to the polls in any way possible.
Across the board, however, Democrats are still turning out at a higher number during early voting. According to tracking by the University of Florida Election Lab, over 12.2 million voters who are registered Democrats have voted early. Around 11.5 million registered Republicans have done the same.
In Georgia, women voters have outshined their male counterparts at the booths, with 55.6 percent of all early votes being cast by women, according to the Election Lab. Some of Trump’s allies have warned that if women outperform men at the ballot box by November 5, it could risk his chances at a second term.
Trump holds a 1.7 percentage point lead over Harris on average across polling in Georgia, according to tracking by 538. In a survey released Thursday by AtlasIntel, the former president was up by 2 points (50 percent to 48 percent) based on the responses of 1,212 likely voters. The gap, however, falls within the survey’s margin of error of 3 percent.
In a survey by CNN and SSRS earlier this week, Trump was ahead of Harris 48 percent to 47 percent, according to responses of 732 registered voters. That gap also falls within the poll’s margin of error of 4.7 percent.
Election forecasts from 538 give Trump a higher chance of securing Georgia and its 16 electoral votes on Tuesday. According to the site’s election simulator, Trump wins Georgia 63 out of 100 times, while Harris wins the state 37 out of 100 times.
Polling aggregator RealClearPolling finds Trump leading by 2.6 points on average as of Thursday, although according to its election forecast, the race for Georgia is considered a “toss-up” between the two candidates.
When reached for comment, Republican National Committee spokesperson Anna Kelly told Newsweek via email Thursday that Trump “is a candidate for ALL Americans which is why he is winning or tied in every battleground, including Georgia—his message resonates with voters across the country.”
Newsweek also reached out to the Harris campaign via email Thursday for comment on the state of the race in Georgia.