This year’s election could have the highest voter turnout since the year 1908, with an estimated number of 150 Million Americans are expected to cast their votes.
With just nine days to go before election day on November 3, 58 million Americans have already cast their votes as of Sunday, with the majority of votes cast from California, Texas, and Florida.
The 2020 election is arguably the most important one in recent history. It's also taking place during a pandemic. While voting looks different this year, this election is predicted to have the highest voter turnout since 1908.
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— Sadie Mae Fisher 🌟 (@sadiemfisher) October 25, 2020
Professor Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who administers the US Election Project, predicts that there will be a record turnout of 150 Million American voters who will be voting in the 2020 Election. This represents around 65% of registered voters.
Furthermore, according to the US Election Project, more than 39 Million mail ballots were already filed, and there are more than 18.9 Million in-person votes recorded. The most votes cast were in the states of Texas, followed by Florida and California.
In Georgia, there were some people who were reported to have waited in line for more than 10 hours just to cast their ballots. The same scenario is reported in Ohio and Virginia. Meanwhile, in the New York State, voters have lined up in polling stations and stood in line for hours to cast their votes on the first day of early voting, held last Saturday.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, at least 1.1 million people had returned their ballots last week.
Texas surpassed 70% of the total turnout.
In Texas, it surpassed 70 percent of total turnout compared to 2016, where the turnout was 59.2%. As of Thursday last week, there were already 37.6 percent or 6.4 Million Texans who have cast their ballots.
A GOP data analyst, Derek Ryan, has predicted that tTexas’sturnout would likely exceed 12 Million or 3 more million voters this week compared to the 2016 election.
In order to disperse crowds at polling stations due to the ongoing pandemic, Governor Greg Abbott ordered to give Texan voters an extra six days of early voting. The state has ordered in-person voting compared to mail-in voting as opted by other states.
Meanwhile, the voting bonanza had some Democrats optimistic. The Democratic party believes that the decades of low voters turnout and undisputed Republican dominance will soon be a “thing of the past.”
However, voters in Texas do not register by party, which made it difficult to assess which party has a better edge. Polls in Texas are unusually close, but neither Democrat Joe Biden nor President Trump has swung through Texas. Both of the Presidential candidates focused on clear battleground states like Florida and Arizona.
The challenges of the pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic will likely hold a major impact on how Americans will vote in this year’s election. As the country saw its highest single-day coronavirus case count on Saturday with a reported case number of 61,671 – the highest since late July.
There are more than 8..5 Million COVID-19 cases all across the country and over 224,000 deaths.
There are also obstacles to getting voters to cast their votes. For instance, this week, the Alabama supreme court authorized officials to ban curbside voting.
On the other hand, the Iowa supreme court sustained a law that could prevent election officials from sending thousands of mail-in ballots. This also made it harder for auditors to correct voter applications with missing information.
Campaign trails days leading up to the election
Meanwhile, in the days leading up to the election, President Trump has been hitting the campaign trail and has a packed schedule going from one state to another. Most of his attacks smear Biden and his children as a “crime family” as President Trump accuses them of corruption.
President Trump’s attacks mostly come from the New York Post report, which surfaced last October 14. In the said report, a laptop that was allegedly belonged to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was left at a computer repair shop in Delaware last April 2019. The shop owner then reported its contents to authorities after Hunter Biden failed to claim the said laptop.
The New York Post also claimed that said laptop and hard drive of which contains emails that can allegedly implicate Joe Biden. This includes Hunter Biden’s international business deals while his father was still sitting as a Vice President.
On the other hand, Joe Biden condemned President Trump’s relentless attacks against his son, Hunter Biden. In a new podcast interview, the Democratic nominee called it “crass” to go after his family.
