This is what early voting looks like a week before an election in the United States

(CNN) – Election day is just one week away. More than 48 million votes have already been cast in 47 states and the city of Washington.

That’s according to data collected by CNN, Edison Research and Catalyst, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit advocacy groups, including information on who is voting before November.

So far, four years ago, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, when registered voters went to the polls ahead of Election Day, early voting across the country has dropped significantly. The total number of early votes is more than 30% of the roughly 158 million votes cast for president in 2020.

In every state for which Catalyst has comparable data, early voters are by far older, slightly more likely to be white, and more likely to be Republican at this point than they were four years ago. Data is available for seven states where these trends typically decide elections.

Early voting trends can’t predict the outcome of an election, but they can provide clues, at least so far, about who’s voting.

So far, in the 39 states Catalist has two years of data on, voters 65 and older represent 44% of returned votes, up 9 percentage points from this point in 2020 with 9% of voters aged 30 to 39 registering early. 12% voter turnout in 2020. 75% of voters in those states, up slightly from 73% four years ago. The share of votes cast by black voters did not change, but Latino and Asian voters represented slightly smaller shares of early voting voters.

Although voter turnout in early elections is generally low, Georgia is an outlier. Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton, who won by about 11,000 votes four years ago. Compared to the same point in 2020, the early voting rate is nearly identical: It’s down just 1%, according to Catalyst data.

While Georgia’s voter turnout is relatively low, it has already exceeded the 2020 primary, with about 1.3 million Georgians voting by mail in 2020, but with this year’s mail-in ballot application deadline. Out of date, only 341,000 mail-in ballots were requested in the state, and only 187,000 were returned, state data shows. By comparison, nearly 2.7 million early votes were cast in person in 2020, but that number has surpassed 2.9 million so far this year, with four days of early voting remaining.

In North Carolina, early voting is down 10% from this point four years ago. But more voters are casting their pre-election ballots in person: About 312,000 more voters cast ballots in person than four years ago, a shift from the pandemic, when many voters cast ballots by mail. As of October 29, about 166,000 postal votes had been cast, just 20% of all postal votes cast in 2020.

In both states, voting by mail has become more difficult since 2020.

In Georgia, voters who want to vote by mail must now present additional identification. The government has shortened the deadline for voters to request and vote by mail and is reducing the number of drop boxes available.

In North Carolina, voters need two witness signatures with their mail-in ballots, and in 2020, the state has reduced that to one. The state now does not accept mail-in ballots received after Election Day, even if they are sealed before the polls close.

With former President Donald Trump leading the Republican Party, many Republicans want to vote on Election Day, while Democrats across the country have shown a willingness to cast their ballots early.

CNN’s most recent national poll found Vice President Kamala Harris with a large lead among voters who said they had already cast their ballots, despite tight competition among the electorate overall.

But the Trump campaign has encouraged Republicans to vote early and by mail this year, a big shift from its anti-voting message before the election in 2020.

Catalist has comparable data, with Republicans representing 35% of the early vote in 27 states, up from 29% at the same point in 2020. Democrats, who represented 45% of the primary vote at this point in 2020, now represent 39. % of initial votes.

In North Carolina, Republicans have won 34% of the primary vote, up 4 percentage points from this point in 2020. The state’s Democrats have polled the lowest so far, with 33% of the early vote, up 5 percentage points from four percentage points earlier. years.

There is a clear partisan divide in how people vote early in North Carolina. So far, 35% of in-person primary voters are Republican and 33% are Democrats, while 27% of mail-in voters are Republican and 36% are Democrats.

In another key state, Arizona, Republicans represent 42% of the vote, up 6 percentage points from this time in 2020. Democrats are down to 35% of the vote so far, down from 39% four years ago. More than one million early and postal votes have been cast there.

It was a similar story in Nevada, where about 697,000 votes were cast. There, Republicans increased their share by 3 percentage points to a current 39%, compared to four years ago, while Democrats decreased their share from 40% in 2020 to 35% today.

There is a formal partisan divide in Nevada, where 41% of mail-in voters so far are Democrats and 31% Republican, while 49% of in-person voters so far are Republicans and 27% are Democrats.

In Pennsylvania, the state that received the most advertising spending and attention from presidential campaigns, Republicans represented 31% of the primary vote, up from 21% in 2020. Democrats represented 69% of the pre-election vote in 2020. ; By 2024, they will represent 58%.

Party-specific data is not available in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia, but much can be learned by looking at the pre-election makeup among different demographic groups of voters, such as race and gender.

In Michigan, where more than 1.9 million pre-election votes have been cast, white voters have cast 84% of the ballots so far, according to Catalyst data, while black voters have cast 11%. The breakdown is similar to what it was at this point in 2020.

By gender, women represent 56% of Michigan voters so far, the same proportion as in 2020.
The numbers tell a slightly different story in Georgia, where the share of votes cast among white voters increased to 64% this time, up from 62% in 2020. Black voters saw their share of the vote drop from 31% to 29%. Four years ago at this point. The shares of Asian and Latino voters will remain the same as in 2020, at 3% each.

In Georgia, so far 56% of votes have been cast by women, a quota four years ago.

In Wisconsin, where 989,000 early votes were cast, Catalyst’s voters so far are 90% white and 4% black, essentially the same point in 2020.

The ratios between men and women are about the same as they were four years ago in Wisconsin, at 44% for men and 55% for women.

— CNN’s Edward Wu contributed to this report.