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What Should We Make of the Record Breaking Early Vote Count?

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    A record shattering 100,298,838 Americans voted before election day this year. That is a truly mind boggling number that foretells a massive and likely unprecedented turnout in the 2020 Presidential election.

    To put this number in perspective, the total number of early votes in the 2016 Presidential election was slightly over 47 million, which means 2020 has seen more than double the amount of early votes than the previous Presidential election.

    So what should we make of this? Is it that people on both sides of the political divide are fired up and ready to take part in their civic duty this year or are we on the precipice of a wave election in the likes we haven't seen since Ronald Reagan in 1984?

    I vowed to never again predict anything in politics after being horribly wrong in 2016, but then again I can't think of any way this amount of early voting helps President Trump. That doesn't mean it's a certainty that Biden wins because, as we know, the election is actually decided in the various "swing states" that are considerably more purple than reliably Democratic or Republican states. So a Trump victory is very much possible, but the stars will have to once again perfectly align for that to happen.

    Regardless of the outcome, record breaking voting can only be a good thing. That means the American people are taking this election seriously and we should be happy about that no matter what happens in this election.

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    Just over 138 million voted in the entire 2016 election. That seems to mean that if 47 million(ish) voted early, then 91 million voted on election day.

    If we are already at 100 million+, imagine if we have the same, same day turnout. That would put us close to 200 million voting. Which is phenomenal, considering the US population is estimated at 328.2 million AND 22.3% are estimated to be under 18 years old.

    If we turnout, let's say 175 million votes, that would be a voter turnout of 68.9% of all eligible voters. And 200 mil would mean 78.8% turnout of all eligible voters. You would have to go back to literally the year 1900 before we had turnout %s like that.

    Compare that to 2016's 60.1% and I would say that's an incredible increase for democracy and political participation.

    My entire life we have never eclipsed 2016's turnout. Before then, between let's say 1980 and 2012, we were in the 49-57% turnout range.

    I hope we shatter records across the board. But I am aware early voting is seriously on the rise because of covid and social distancing measures. So we could see not as impressive same day turnout. That's possible too. Time will tell.

    Getting my numbers from these sources btw:
    census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST...
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_State...
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_...

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    So far 141 million+ total votes counted, with millions left to count. Not sure what the numbers will end up being, but it definitely surprised 2016's totals already. But I guess we will fall short of 172-200 mil.

    Post official numbers if you have a good resource. Seems to be a bit hard to find atm. Thanks.