Georgia’s early voting period ended Friday with more than 440,000 voters casting ballots in person or by mail, a nearly 65% decrease from the same time in the COVID-delayed 2020 primary.
Here’s a look inside the numbers and how they changed from four years ago.
In 2020, turnout was driven by nearly one million mail-in ballots, as pandemic-era voters avoided public polling places. So far in this election, voters overwhelmingly chose to vote early in-person rather than by mail.
Almost 25,000 Georgians, 6% of all early voters, sent an absentee ballot by mail while more than 415,000 — the remaining 94% — cast their ballot in person at the polls.
The absentee numbers could still go up. Data from the Secretary of State’s office shows that about 17,000 issued absentee ballots have not yet been returned. Voters can return those by 7 p.m., Tuesday, the day of the party primary elections.
This split between absentee ballots by mail and in-person early voting is shared evenly across rural and urban counties. In urban areas 6% of early voters mailed a ballot in this election, while 94% opted to vote in person. In rural areas, 7% voted by mail and the remaining 93% voted in person.
More than 283,000 people voted in the Republican primary contest, which was the only contested race for much of the early voting period. Nearly two in three early voters in the primary cast Republican ballots.
While there were dramatically more Republican ballots than Democratic ballots cast this year, both parties saw sharp drops in early voting participation. Around 620,000 voters who chose a Democratic ballot in 2020 during advanced voting have not voted yet in this primary. Among Republicans, that number is 540,000.
Each party has also attracted voters who did not participate in the 2020 primary. Among those voters, 120,000 chose Republican ballots and 49,000 chose Democratic ballots.
In Glascock, Banks, Murray, and Bacon counties more than 95% of early voters cast Republican ballots. In Clayton, Dougherty, DeKalb, and Hancock counties less than 30% of registered early voters cast Republican ballots, the lowest in the state.
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