(Reuters) — Although the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election is less than a month away, the first ballots were cast in Ohio on Wednesday (October 12) as several states began early voting, NBC reported.
People lined up at this polling place in Cleveland and Cincinnati to take advantage of early voting. 1.1 million ballots are estimated for the state of Ohio, NBC said.
Thirty-eight of the 50 U.S. states have some form of early voting in this year’s race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Pushing supporters to vote early has become a large organizational effort by both major U.S. parties.
Republican Donald Trump was losing ground in many of the states he needs to win to capture the presidency, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation Project analysis released on Monday.
The project estimates that if the election had been held at the end of last week, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had at least a 95 percent chance of winning enough states to reach the minimum 270 Electoral College votes needed to become the next president, based on polling between Sept. 30 and Oct. 7.
Those odds had steadily grown from about 60 percent on Sept. 15 to almost 90 percent on Sept 30. In the last four weeks, her estimated margin of victory has grown from about 14 votes to 118, according to the project.
The polling did not capture reaction to Trump’s performance in Sunday’s debate or the release on Friday of his 11-year-old sexually aggressive comments about women.
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and Florida are now leaning toward the Democratic candidate, according to the Reuters/Ipsos project, an online survey of about 15,000 people every week. Arizona and Iowa are in the too-close-to-call category after being considered likely Trump states.
