Voters head to polls with roughly 82M early ballots already cast

More than 82 million voters took advantage of early voting as Election Day kicks off.

The number is slightly more than half the total turnout in the presidential election in 2020, The Associated Press reported.

Just one week ago, data from the University of Florida's election tracker showed that more than 51 million had already cast their votes.

As of Monday evening, the UF Election Lab's tracker showed that there have been more than 44 million in-person early votes cast, and more than 37 million ballots returned. More than 67 million mail ballots had been requested, the data showed.

Though early votes are not always a strong predictor in the general election's outcome, they can give insights into which races are tight.

Crucial states like North Carolina and Georgia have already had record early voting numbers.

On Sunday, the North Carolina State Board of Elections set an early voting record, with more than 4.2 million voters casting early ballots at in-person voting sites, officials said. In 2020, 3.6 million North Carolinians cast their ballots early, which set the previous record.

As of Sunday morning, including absentee voting, nearly 4.5 million ballots were cast in the general election, which equates to roughly 57 percent of the state's registered voters.

Georgia shattered records with more than 300,000 ballots cast on the first day of early voting. Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling said that the number was 123 percent higher than the last record.

On Election Day, Vice President Harris and former President Trump are neck-and-neck, with each tied at 48.4 percent, according to a national polling aggregate from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ).