Despite Republican opposition to early voting in prior years, the method is encouraged at an early vote rally in Chesterfield on Oct. 26, 2024 hosted by Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s political action committee. (Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)
One day before the presidential election, early voting turnout in Virginia is falling short of the historic highs seen in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of Sunday, more than 2.29 million Virginians have already cast their ballots — a 525,000 decrease from the unprecedented 2.82 million early votes cast by Nov. 3, 2020, during the last presidential election, according to data from the Virginia Public Access Project.
In-person was the most popular option for early voters this year. On Saturday alone — the last day for early in-person voting during this election cycle — 139,376 cast their ballot. In total, 1.856 million early voters did so in person, with just 437,173 voting by mail.
Despite an initial wave of early voting in the southern and western parts of the state, the pattern of early ballot casting is about the same as some elections in more recent years, said David Richards, a political science professor at the University of Lynchburg.
“Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads seem to have had higher percentage rates of early voting, but there were some interesting things as urban areas, cities, and towns seemed to often, but not always, have higher turnout rates,” Richards said. That could reflect that it’s easier to mobilize people if you have a denser population base to organize, he added.
“Overall rates are down compared to 2020, but that was the pandemic election, so the early voting rate is actually pretty decent. Most precincts have rates above 10%, many in the mid-40s, and at least a couple hit 50%, which is pretty impressive.”
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