Welcome to Insights – TargetSmart’s tip-sheet to provide regular updates on the latest voter registration, early vote, and voter turnout trends.

Here are today’s key takeaways:

Nationally, early and absentee voting is surging in a way we have not seen before. As of the morning of October 16, more than 5x as many votes have been cast than at this point in 2016. At least 17,715,058 votes have been cast in the 2020 general election, as opposed to 3,826,510 ballots at this point in 2016.

While it’s still early, Democrats are turning out first-time and low-propensity voters who will be critical to ensuring Joe Biden carries 270 electoral votes.

National Turnout:

Turnout in Presidential Battleground States

In battleground states, modeled Democrats have an early 10.5% advantage among all voters, and an 11.1% advantage among first time and infrequent voters, which is higher than the 8% lead Democrats had in 2016.

Republicans are also digging themselves a big hole in Pennsylvania. 508,334 voters have cast ballots in the 2020 general election and modeled Democrats have a 60.2% lead:

Non-college educated white voters also account for a 6.4 point smaller share of the early vote across the battleground states. They represent a reduced share of the early vote in every single battleground state, with PA (-16 pt share) and GA (-10 pt share) leading the way.

For more comprehensive data and analysis visit Insights.TargetSmart.com. For the latest early vote data, visit TargetEarly.TargetSmart.com.