Although multiple reports have shown strong turnout for early voting in the 2024 election, this is not necessarily a sign of strength for Democratic candidates like it has been in previous cycles.
The reason for this is that Republicans have convinced their voters this cycle to engage in early voting and not merely wait until election day.
As News from the States reports, although "Ohio’s Democratic strongholds are outperforming previous early voting records" it turns out that "the counties that voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 are ahead in ballots returned" so far.
Diving deeper into the numbers, the report explains that roughly 65 percent of the early votes counted so far come from the counties that former President Donald Trump won four years ago.
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"That isn’t to say that everyone voting in those counties is voting for Trump — it could be the Democrats that live there that are voting early," the report adds. "But the ruby red counties, like Putnam and Mercer, are showing up."
This phenomenon isn't just limited to Ohio either, as The Nevada Independent's Jon Ralston has also documented a surge in Republican early voting in his state, which is a major change from past years when Democrats racked up large firewalls in places such as Clark County ahead of election day.
"Dems are only winning the urban Nevada ballot race by 1 percent – 38-37," Ralston writes in the latest update to his early voting blog. "Repubs have a nearly 3 percent turnout advantage statewide. It’s 3.5 percent in Clark, less than a point in Washoe and Dems actually are turning out slightly more than Repubs in rural Nevada in percentage, but the [registration] is so overwhelming that it doesn’t help them."