ALBANY – More than 115,000 people from Erie County have already voted in this year's election, the third highest percentage of registered voters to cast early ballots in New York, according to the state Board of Elections.
And the chairman of the county Democratic Party said the numbers appear to be good news for Democrats.
Statewide, 1,643,958 people have voted early at in-person voting places that range from fire houses and town halls to community centers, according to the latest information through Thursday.
In the first six days of early voting that began Saturday statewide, the turnout figure for Erie County stood at 18.1% through Thursday. Erie County offers registered voters a choice of 37 different locations to cast their ballots early.
Only the counties of Richmond – Staten Island – and Schenectady had higher turnout percentages. Staten Island, the highest turnout rate, has seen 21.58% of its voters turn out early, records released Friday morning show.
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Statewide, turnout through early voting is already at 12.77% of registered voters. Early voting ends Sunday, which is expected to be a large turnout day across New York.
The numbers do not include 1,068,000 absentee ballots returned to election boards across New York. That number is as of Tuesday, election officials said.
Commissioners Ralph M. Mohr and Jeremy J. Zellner said in a statement that since early voting began Saturday, there have been 115,217 ballots cast in Erie County.
Long lines of voters wanting to vote in-person and early have been reported across the state, especially in New York City. In the five boroughs, 941,550 people voted early through Thursday, the state reported on Friday.
“Every day we’ve been setting a new record," John Conklin, a state elections board spokesman, said of the run between last Saturday and Wednesday. On Thursday, the first decline was seen.
Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy J. Zellner on Friday said the party’s analysis of early voting indicates about 34,000 Erie County residents who did not participate in the 2016 presidential election voted this year. He added that 20,000 who have not voted in the last four elections voted in the early process, while almost 18,000 who went to the polls registered after 2017.
Zellner, who is also Erie County’s Democratic elections commissioner, said computer software that rates voter histories identifies 63% of the early voters as “leaning Democratic.”
County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the percentage of early voters this year is even higher when you factor in mail-in ballots.
He also said that of the votes cast as of Thursday night, more than half are from Democrats, with the remaining votes about evenly split between Republicans and voters who identify with neither major party.
“It’s very clear that voters are making their voices heard and that Democrats are coming out in record numbers,” he said.
On Wednesday, 329,499 voters cast early, in-person ballots. On Thursday, 281,766 turned out statewide.
In Niagara County through Thursday, 14,204 people have voted since last Saturday at in-person facilities, or 9.89% of the county’s registered voters.
The early voting in New York is impressive, though not nearly as dramatic as a number of other states. Already, early voting in Texas – totaling more than 9 million voters – has surpassed the total vote count in the 2016 presidential contest for that state, according to the U.S. Elections Project, a vote tracker system led by University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald.
A total of 21,142 votes were recorded Tuesday, bringing the count to 70,017 since early voting began Saturday.
When looking at the number of absentee and in-person early votes cast so far for the November 3 election as a percent of the 2016 total general election vote count in the state, New York, so far, stands at 28.3%. That is among the lowest in the nation and far lower than such states as Florida (81.6%), New Jersey (74.4%), Georgia (86.9%), California (62.7%) and Washington (88%), according to McDonald’s group.
In all, 83,561,641 Americans have already voted in advance of next Tuesday, the Florida-based project reported Friday afternoon.
New York last year joined 38 states that already offered early voting in some way or another. In all, 256,251 New Yorkers took advantage of early voting last year in an otherwise slower election year that featured local government contests.
But this year, the early voting counts are exceeding predictions, as Covid-19-weary voters look to try to avoid what would be possibly even longer lines on the Nov. 3 Election Day in a year with a presidential election and hotly contested congressional and state legislative races across New York State.
There are 11.7 million New Yorkers who are considered “actively” registered to vote in New York. When “inactive” voters are included, the total number of registered voters stands at 12.97 million. However, the turnout percentages provided by the state elections board is based only on the “actively” registered voters.
In all, between in-person voting and paper absentee ballots returned to county election boards, a total of more than 2.7 million people have already voted since last Saturday in advance of the Nov. 3 election.
Early voting is not as popular in some counties, especially some smaller ones. St. Lawrence County in northern New York has seen only 5.4% of its voters turn out early, election officials report.
News Political Reporter Robert J. McCarthy contributed to this article
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