Contra Costa County reports long lines of early in-person voters

WALNUT CREEK, California. – Contra Costa County was among Bay Area counties that reported a high turnout Friday for in-person voting before Election day.

“We saw a tremendous turnout,” said Contra Costa County Clerk Kristin Connelly. “My team that’s been around for years and years and years hasn’t seen anything like this.”

However, statewide and nationally, the combined number of voters participating in early voting in person and voting by mail fell from 20 to 20.

“Sometimes when you compare it to 2020, which was kind of a unicorn of an election, people want to infer that the change in voting patterns is entirely due to enthusiasm, but in many, many cases it’s because of a change in electoral mechanics,” he said. said Paul Mitchell, Vice President of Political Data, Inc. “A lot of laws were put in place so that people could vote by mail. In California, we made those laws permanent, they didn’t necessarily make the same laws permanent or change the laws since then.”

For in-person early voting, Georgia and North Carolina are reporting record turnouts.

Mitchell also monitored California’s vote-by-mail numbers.

“We’re seeing a lot of the same patterns. Early voting is older, it’s whiter. Republicans are doing a little bit better in early voting than Democrats. Independents, they’re really lagging in turnout.”

So far, 35 percent of Republican registered mail-in voters have returned their ballots in the state, compared to 31 percent of Democrats. In all, that equates to more than 3.2 million Democrats sending in their ballots, compared to more than 1.9 million Republicans.