Well over a third of registered Maryland voters cast their votes by mail or early voting ahead of Election Day, according to the State Board of Elections.

Those more than 1.6 million voters represent 39% of Marylanders registered as of Oct. 20 and 53.5% of the total turnout in the 2020 general election. About 7,600 more people voted early in person than in 2020.

To match 2020’s overall turnout of about 3.1 million voters, this year’s combined mail-in and Election Day turnout would need to be about 2,072,280 ballots.

In 2016, almost 60% of ballots cast were on Election Day, a stark difference from the 14% in 2020, when, months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the state automatically sent mail-in applications to voters. In each cycle, about a third of voters cast their ballots during early voting.

The number of mail-in ballots sent to voters this year was roughly half of those sent in 2020 and almost three times the number of ballots sent in 2016. Going into Tuesday, the number of mail-in ballots received by election boards was about 42% of 2020’s total.

Registered Democrats in Maryland were more likely to submit mail-in ballots, accounting for 65.6% of those received entering this week. The distribution of the remaining received mail-in ballots was 17.5% registered Republicans and 16.8% unaffiliated or other. Democrats represent 52.6% of registered voters, Republicans 24% and unaffiliated 23.4%.

Nationwide, over 82 million people had voted early in some way. Early voting — both in-person and by mail — was shy of the 2020 election, but some states including the battleground Georgia surpassed 2020 early voting turnout.