Georgia Surpasses 1M Votes for Senate Runoffs in Less Than a Week of Early Voting
Georgia’s Senate runoff elections have already surpassed one million votes, less than a week into the state’s early voting period.
Early voting for the runoffs began on Monday. As of Friday approximately 1,123,095 early votes have been cast, according to data from GeorgiaVotes, a website that tracks early voting data.
Data from GeorgiaVotes also shows that at the same point in the general election, roughly 1,223,045 early votes have been cast—indicating a 100,950 vote difference when compared to the early voting numbers in the Senate runoffs.
Among the total number of early votes cast as of Friday, more than 481,000 have been mail-in ballots and over 641,000 were early votes, according to the website.
Using numbers provided by the Georgia secretary of state’s office, The Hill reported that roughly 168,000 votes had been cast on the first day of early voting for the Senate runoffs, which surpassed the 128,000 number of votes submitted on the first day of early voting for the general election.
According to the U.S. Elections Project, created by Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, roughly 24,106 people who did not vote in the general election have already cast their ballot in the Senate runoffs, while 889,991 have voted in both.
Newsweek reached out to the Georgia secretary of state’s elections division for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
The number of early votes cast in Georgia’s Senate runoffs comes less than a month before the January 5 elections, consisting of two races that will decide which political party controls majority of the Senate next year.