The surge in early voting comes amid a stubborn novel coronavirus pandemic that has led to a surge of early and mail balloting, particularly among Democrats, Reuters reported.

Republican US President Donald Trump has sowed confusion and distrust of mail balloting, making repeated, unfounded allegations of widespread fraud ahead of his contest with Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

As of last night, nearly 10.4 million Americans have cast a vote in states that report early voting data, according to the election information resource at the University of Florida.

By way of comparison, as of October 16, 2016, some 1.4 million Americans had cast an early vote.

The number of ballots cast in five states — Minnesota, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin — already exceeds 20 per cent of total 2016 turnout, the Elections Project said.

With four weeks to go before Election Day Nov. 3, more than 3.8 million Americans already have voted, far surpassing about 75,000 at this time in 2016, according to the US Elections Project, which compiles early voting data.

The shift has been driven by an expansion of early and mail-in voting in many states as a safe way to cast a ballot during the coronavirus pandemic and an eagerness to weigh in on the political future of Trump, said Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who administers the project.

“We’ve never seen this many people voting so far ahead of an election,” McDonald said. “People cast their ballots when they make up their minds, and we know that many people made up their minds long ago and already have a judgment about Trump”, Reuters reported.

The early surge has led McDonald to predict a record turnout of about 150 million, representing 65 percent of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.

Biden leads Trump in national opinion polls, although surveys in crucial battleground states indicate a tighter race.

The numbers reported so far come from 31 states, McDonald said, and will grow rapidly as more states begin early in-person voting and report absentee mail-in totals in the next few weeks. All but about a half-dozen states allow some level of early in-person voting.

The percentage of voters who cast their ballot at a voting machine on Election Day already had been in steady decline before this year, according to the US Election Assistance Commission.

The total number of early or mail-in votes more than doubled from nearly 25 million in 2004 to 57 million in 2016, it said, representing an increase from one in five of all ballots cast to two in five of all ballots cast.

Trump has repeatedly railed against mail-in voting, making unfounded accusations that it leads to fraud. Experts say fraud is rare.

Those attacks by the president have shown signs of depressing Republican interest in voting by mail. Democrats have more than doubled the number of returned mail-in ballots by Republicans in seven states that report voter registration data by party, according to the Elections Project.

In the crucial battleground state of Florida, Democrats have requested more than 2.4 million mail-in ballots and returned 282,000, while Republicans have asked for nearly 1.7 million and returned more than 145,000.

A national Reuters/Ipsos poll taken last week found 5 percent of Democrats nationwide said they had already voted compared to 2 percent of Republicans. About 58 percent of Democrats planned to vote early compared to 40 percent of Republicans.

McDonald said early voting typically starts strong, then drops before surging just ahead of the election. But in some states, the rates of participation already have skyrocketed a month out.

In South Dakota, early voting is nearly 23 percent of the total turnout in 2016. It is nearly 17 percent of total 2016 turnout in Virginia and nearly 15 percent of total 2016 turnout in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

“That’s just nuts,” McDonald said. “Every piece of data suggests very high turnout for this election. I think that’s just a given.”

Thirty-seven percent of Republican registered voters in the Sept. 21-22 survey said the 2020 election will probably be rigged, while 36 percent of Democratic voters said the same.

Independents were slightly more inclined to say the election will be rigged, at 40 percent.

Similarly, 38 percent of respondents overall said they believe the election would likely be manipulated, and 17 percent of voters said it will definitely be rigged.

While both Democrats and Republicans may agree on the possibility of a rigged election, Mallory Newall, director of research at Ipsos, says the reasons behind that agreement vary.

“Democrats tend to be more concerned about voter suppression and foreign interference,” Newall told Hill.TV.

“Republicans on the other hand, tend to be more concerned about voter fraud and how voting by mail can impact that,” she added.

The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 943 registered voters between Sept. 21 and 22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.19 percentage points.

Fifty-one percent of registered voters surveyed in the Sept. 10-14 poll said the current Electoral College system should be abolished so that whoever wins the nationwide popular vote wins the presidency.

By contrast, 49 percent of voters said the current Electoral College system should be kept as is “to distribute voter power among all 50 states.”

The survey found Democratic voters to be more likely than Republican or independent respondents to favor abolishing the Electoral College system.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents who identified as Democrats said it should be abolished compared to 49 percent of independents and just 33 percent of Republicans.

The survey comes less than 50 days from Election Day where President Trump will hope to win reelection against Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote by roughly 3 million votes but won the Electoral College against former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 3,758 registered voters between Sept. 10-14. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.

A partial transcript of Ryan’s remarks at an event hosted by Solamere, a company linked to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), whom Paul shared a presidential ticket with in 2012, revealed that the former GOP House leader fears Trump could lose his home state as well as other states he carried in 2016, including the GOP stronghold of Arizona.

Arizona, Ryan said, was “presently trending against us,” according to the transcript obtained by the Times. He added that other states were also potential Biden pickups.

“Biden is winning over Trump in this category of voters 70 to 30, and if that sticks, he cannot win states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania,” said Ryan.

The Trump campaign dismissed those concerns in a statement provided to The Hill.

“We continuously track 17 states that will determine who the next president is – and that includes Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. President Trump has been, and remains, in strong position in all 17 those states and be re-elected. Joe Biden is a weak candidate who is obviously a hapless tool of the extreme left. President Trump kept his promises, has a strong record of achievement for the American people, and will be re-elected,” said Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman.

Ryan’s warning comes as Trump’s reelection prospects appear to have taken a hit amid a slew of new polls showing the president trailing Biden by double digits nationally.

In a new interview with Fox News this weekend, the US president insisted that his polling did not show the entire scope of his strength with voters and referred to them as “fake polls.”

“I’m not losing, because those are fake polls. They were fake in 2016 and now they’re even more fake. The polls were much worse in 2016,” said Trump.