Nearly 50,000 New Voters Have Already Cast Ballots in Georgia

It’s October 5, and the presidential election is already underway in Georgia, where over 1.4 million eligible voters have already requested a mail-in ballot.

According to data made public by Georgia State Secretary Brad Raffensperger’s office, helpfully broken down by the volunteer site Georgia Votes, 228,726 general election ballots have been accepted. Of those, 49,929 voters did not cast a ballot in 2016, and nearly as many, 45,339, did not cast a ballot two years ago. Among all those who requested an absentee ballot, over 29% did not vote in the 2016 general election, accounting for 422,444 eligible voters.

While over half of all accepted mail-in ballots so far came from voters 65 and older, only 16% of those voters were non-voters in 2016, compared to 63% of voters 18-29, 40% of voters 30-39, 32% of voters 40-49 and 26% of voters 50-64.

Just over half, or 54%, of accepted votes came from white voters, while 35% came from Black voters, 2% each came from Hispanics and Asians and 8% came from others. Women made up 55% of early voters.

While the pandemic has thrown off much in the way of normal vote modeling, it appears that turnout in Georgia could be extremely high this year—there are now 7.4 million registered voters in the state, an increase of 800,000 since 2016.

Today is the final day to register in the state of Georgia to be eligible to vote this cycle. Early in-person voting begins Oct. 12.