Millions of Americans have already cast ballots for the 2024 election, although early voting results provide just a taste of how the candidates are performing in what is expected to be one of the closest elections in history.

Nearly every state offers some form of early voting in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Polls opened in Florida and Texas on Monday, while key swing states such as Georgia and Nevada opened their polling booths last week.

Preliminary polls have shown Vice President Kamala Harris well ahead of former President Donald Trump among early voters, but the lead is hardly indicative of who is ahead overall. Democratic voters tend to be more supportive of early voting than Republicans, and Trump has repeatedly claimed, without merit, that mail-in voting options increase the chance of election fraud.

But this fall, Trump and the Republican Party changed course and encouraged voters to return their ballots any way they can, even though Trump has continued to describe early voting as “stupid things.”

“We need to get out and vote,” the Republican candidate told supporters at a rally in Pennsylvania last month. ‘And you can start right away. You know that, right? Now we have this stupid thing where you can vote 45 days early. I wonder what the heck happens during those 45.”

Where did early voting start?

Forty-seven states, as well as the District of Columbia, offer early voting and mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Early voting dates vary by state. Polls in Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia and Vermont opened in September. In states like Kentucky and Oklahoma, early voting opens less than a week before Election Day.

Two key swing states – Georgia and North Carolina – saw record turnout on the first day of early voting this election cycle. More than 310,000 votes were cast in the Peach State on Tuesday, and by Friday more than 1 million voters had submitted their decisions in person or by mail. In North Carolina, election officials said more than 353,000 votes were cast on the first day of early voting on Thursday.

Some states – Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire – do not offer any form of early voting unless the voter has an excuse, such as military deployment. In places like North Dakota and Pennsylvania, early voting is organized by county officials, not at the state level.

Who is leading the polls?

Polls have shown Harris with a significant lead among early voters. This is evident from a study published on Monday by USA today and Suffolk University, the vice president was up 63 percent to 34 percent among those who have already voted.

But the same poll showed Trump ahead by double digits among those who said they planned to vote on Election Day, putting Harris up 52 percent to 35 percent. The survey was conducted by telephone from October 14 to 18 and is based on responses from a thousand likely voters.

According to NBC News, which uses the firm TargetSmart to collect voter data, as of Monday nearly 14.5 million people have voted by mail or in person in the 2024 election. Of those voters, 46 percent are Democrats, while 29 percent are registered Republicans. A quarter of early voters are not affiliated with any of the major parties.

Nearly an equal number of registered Democrats and Republicans voted early in several key battleground states. In Georgia, 49 percent of all early votes come from Republicans, while 46 percent come from Democrats. The difference was similar as of Monday in Nevada (40 percent Democrat, 35 percent Republican) and North Carolina (36 percent Democrat, 33 percent Republican).

In Arizona, registered Republican voters slightly outperform Democrats, 44 percent to 35 percent. Democrats are comfortably ahead in Pennsylvania (67 percent to 27 percent), Minnesota (54 percent to 36 percent) and Wisconsin (40 percent to 19 percent).

Most forecasters have cast this year’s Harris-Trump showdown as a toss-up. Harris was ahead of Trump by an average of 1.8 points (48.2 percent to 46.4 percent) in national polls on Monday, according to FiveThirtyEight. But the polling firm’s election model favors Trump to win the Electoral College, 52 percent to 48 percent.

According to the FiveThirtyEight poll, Harris and Trump are also tied in most battleground states, although the former president holds a slight lead in North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona as of Monday.

When asked to comment on the early voter turnout, Republican National Committee spokesperson Anna Kelly said Newsweek via email: “Even after Democrats spent more than $200 million redefining Kamala Harris, President Trump is winning on every battleground as his message resonates with voters across the country.”

Newsweek reached out to Harris’ campaign for comment via email on Monday.

When is election day?

By federal law, Election Day always falls on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This year the elections are on November 5.

Election Day is not recognized as a federal holiday, although about a dozen states consider it a holiday, meaning most state offices are closed that day. Most states also offer employees some type of time off to vote.

What happens if Trump loses?

Many experts have warned that the former president and his allies are already casting doubt on the election to challenge the outcome if he loses next month.

Trump has maintained that the 2020 presidential election, in which he lost to President Joe Biden, was stolen from him due to election fraud. There is no evidence to support such claims, but some of Trump’s closest confidantes, including Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have repeatedly debunked criticism of this year’s election systems. After early voting opened in her state last week, Greene pushed the well-known conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems machines are “switching” early votes in favor of Democrats. Officials from both Dominion and Georgia have denounced such claims.

At a news conference in North Carolina on Monday, Trump told reporters that he has “not seen any sign” that this year’s election would not be fair, although he added that he “knows the other side, and they are not good’.

Unlike four years ago, Trump does not have the same presidential powers if he is unhappy with the election results this time. But he could still challenge the election as a private citizen through the legal system. Trump filed multiple lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results, but all were dismissed by the court.

Trump last month threatened jail time against “lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials” who “cheated” if he wins a second term in the White House. He also recently threatened to use military force to pursue the “enemy from within” if he were to win in November.

Steve Cheung, spokesman for Trump’s campaign, said this Newsweek over the weekend that the former president was “100% right – those who seek to undermine democracy by sowing chaos in our elections are a direct threat, as is the terrorist from Afghanistan who was arrested for plotting multiple attacks on Election Day in the United States.”

How does this year compare to 2020?

The 2020 presidential election, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, saw record numbers of early voters, and Democrats turned out in far greater numbers than their Republican counterparts.

As of October 16, 2020, more than 22 million Americans had voted in the election, which made up 16 percent of the total votes cast in the 2016 presidential election. According to the Associated Press, at that point in the election, Democrats led Republicans by 2- 1 drowned out.

Nearly 60 million people had voted in the general election as of October 25, 2020, according to Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who tracks votes for his site ElectProject.org. At that point in the race, Democrats were still outperforming Republicans 2-1 on mail-in ballots, but the parties were about even for those who voted in person.

According to McDonald, 93 million ballots had been cast as of November 1, 2020. The 2020 election saw the largest increase in inter-presidential voting in US history, with 17 million more people voting than in 2016.