Georgia polls closed after record-breaking early voting: What we know

Georgia has begun early voting and record-breaking voter turnout is tightening an already tight race in the battleground state.

All eyes were on the Peach State on Tuesday as voters headed to the polls to cast early votes ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Georgia residents have two and a half weeks to vote in person, from October 15 to November 1, including two Saturdays. Some counties also offer Sunday elections.

“It looks like this is going to be a record-breaking first day of early voting,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told reporters Tuesday morning. “But we don’t make predictions, we let voters decide, but it looks like we’re going to have strong early voting today.”

As of 2 p.m., Georgia had already broken the 2020 record with 187,973 votes. Four years ago, 136,000 votes were cast on the first day of early voting. By the end of Tuesday, more than a quarter of a million votes had been cast. Over 12,900 mail-in ballots were also returned, according to the Secretary of State’s Election Data Hub.

With 16 electoral votes, Georgia should be a big step towards 270. The last time a presidential candidate won the White House without the Peach State was in 2004, when John Kerry won Georgia but lost the presidency to George W. Bush. Donald Trump won the state in 2016 by a margin of 5.1 percent, while Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020 by a much smaller margin of 0.23 percent, or 11,779 votes.

Polls also show a close race. Former President Trump has a one-point lead over Vice President Kamala Harris, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker, while RealClearPolitics shows Trump with an even smaller lead, just half a point ahead of Harris. Nevertheless, both predictions are within the margin of error.

“Both campaigns have suggested that people who need to vote by mail should do so, but they are clearly pushing for early voting,” said Audrey Haynes, an associate professor of political science at the University of Georgia Newsweek.

Was Tuesday good for Trump or Harris?

At the start of the first day of early voting, there was a “lot of ground offensive” from Democrats and less from Trump’s campaign, Haynes said. But she noted that some of the state’s top Republicans, like Gov. Brian Kemp and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, have made major efforts to put in place an early voting infrastructure that “certainly works.”[s] for Republicans in Georgia and the ticket in general.

Harris supporters quickly declared a victory for the Democratic candidate on Tuesday, reiterating that the number of early votes was larger than the margin by which Biden won the state four years ago.

“I’m assuming this is a good sign that 11,780 votes won’t be nearly enough this time,” one supporter wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Political commentator Tristan Snell echoed those comments, tweeting that Tuesday’s numbers were well above the record set in 2020, an election that resulted in Biden defeating Trump.

“Kamala Harris is on track to win A LOT more,” Snell concluded.

While it is not known which candidate was favored in early voting, information about which counties voted on Tuesday could provide clues. This was announced by the Foreign Ministry Newsweek that Georgia’s Election Data Hub will update data after polls close at 5:00 p.m

“The Atlanta area favors Harris, but rural Georgia is Trump country,” said political analyst Steve Schier Newsweek.

Haynes agreed that early voting in Atlanta and turnout in Augusta, Macon, Columbus and Savannah would be welcome news for Harris, but that anywhere in Georgia could mean promising signs for Trump.

Some experts cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the first day of early voting. Dave Wasserman, senior editor and election analyst for The Cook Political Report, said on He added that the data cannot be compared to the patterns observed in 2020 because voting behavior changed so much after the pandemic.

“Resist the temptation to draw conclusions at all costs,” Wasserman wrote.

“The campaigns will work hard until the last moment. The choice is close. And as we get closer to Election Day, the polls are getting tighter,” Haynes said. “But not until Election Day (or perhaps the next) will we know what decision the country has made about who rules in the White House or who controls the House, Senate or state legislatures.”

Voters in 2024 are excited

“We see a significant increase in voting on the first day of in-person early voting,” Haynes said. “The most motivated voters come on the first day.”

The early voting numbers in Georgia are part of a nationwide trend that suggests Americans are highly motivated to vote in the 2024 election. A national NBC News poll conducted Oct. 4-8 found that 5 percent of registered voters had already cast their ballots. Another 47 percent said they planned to vote early, while 3 percent were still undecided about the voting method and 1 percent did not plan to vote, leaving just 44 percent planning to vote on Election Day.

Early voting has become increasingly common in recent elections, particularly in 2020 as election officials and political campaigns sought to expand voting access during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of October 2020, 68 percent of Americans said they planned to vote early.

Democrats tend to vote by mail earlier and more often than Republicans, but a Harvard poll conducted Oct. 11-13 found Trump currently has a slight lead among early voters in battleground states. The poll, which included 3,145 registered voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points, showed Trump at 48 percent compared to Harris at 47 percent.