More than 6.8 million people ages 18 to 29 had voted early or by mail in the national election by midweek, a 2 ½-fold increase over their voting level at this point four years ago, according to the Democratic data firm TargetSmart. Texas has witnessed a particularly robust turnout among younger voters. As of Wednesday morning, voters under 30 had cast more than 900,000 ballots in the Lone Star State, nearly three times the number as around this time in 2016.
Younger voters helped power Texas to an unprecedented 8.2 million total votes by Wednesday, a full week before Nov. 3, the last day to cast ballots. That represents 91% of the vote cast in the state in all of 2016. Driven largely by the COVID-19 pandemic, the early vote for all Americans topped any previous election — reaching more than 75 million Wednesday, well over half the 138 million who voted in all of 2016.
Other battleground states mirrored that outsized turnout by young people, TargetSmart data showed: Young Florida voters have cast 569,000 ballots, a 42% increase over their 2016 total; some 404,000 young North Carolinians have voted, a 63% jump; and young people in Georgia have expanded their vote by 82% to more than 340,000.
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