ATLANTA — Georgia continues to see record-breaking voting turnout with just one more day left for early voting ahead of the primary on Tuesday.
According to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's Office, as of Wednesday night, more than 565,000 Georgians have voted early, which is a 153% increase from the same point in the early voting period in the 2018 primary election and a 189% increase in the 2020 primary election.
Georgia has been seeing record early voting turnout since the first day of early voting this year. Raffensperger's Office said the turnout has surged to nearly three times the number on the first day of early voting.
Here's the breakdown for ballots as of May 18, according to Raffernsper's Office:
- Total Turnout: 615,378
- Early In-Person: 567,815
- Absentee: 47,563
- Republican: 353,161
- Democrat: 258,200
- Nonpartisan: 4,017
- New Turnout Since Previous Day: 76,081
- Early In-Person Since Previous Day: 70,884
- Absentee Since Previous Day: 5,237
Turnout Numbers Through Same Day in 2020:
- Early In-Person: 224,449
Turnout Numbers Through Same Day in 2018:
- Early In-Person: 196,218
11Alive asked Raffensperger what his reaction was to the record-breaking voter turnout in an exclusive one-on-one interview.
"It’s fantastic. What it shows is that it’s never been easier to vote in Georgia, but we have the appropriate guardrails, securities in place," he said. "When you have strong security that elevates people’s confidence in the process. So now, we have photo ID for all absentee voting. We have 17 days of early voting. Just Thursday and Friday left to go…but we’re already seeing numbers pushing 200 percent higher than what in 2020."