Millions of ballots already mailed in across California with early voting underway

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Thirty-six states have early voting , and across the country so far, more than 18 million mail-in ballots have already been sent in. In California, the number is 3.7 million ballots.

Political experts say even in deep blue California, there are certain areas where there are very competitive races where turnout will be a big factor.

"In key congressional races. many of which in the greater L.A. area, may end up impacting which party controls the House of Representatives next year," said Dan Shnur with USC Annenberg. "Those early turnout numbers could be very, very important. We don't know who they favor yet."

Early voting is now underway across Southern California. Los Angeles County has the most returned ballots so far at about 679,000.

"Now that's a little bit lower than what we saw four years ago, but of course four years ago, we were in the midst of the pandemic so it was a different environment, so it's a little difficult to know how to read that. I do think this is going to be a high turnout election," said L.A. County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.

Logan says there will be 648 voting locations open by Election Day. The ballot this year is long.

"In presidential elections, we always expect a little bit more in-person voting and of course on Election Day. I think we're still kind of creatures habit that we think of that about being on Election Day so you know, we expect that to be a busy day," Logan added.

Schnur says all the propositions on the ballot could also bring out more voters.

"What we found historically in California is that often ballot initiatives are a greater motivator to turn out less frequent voters than candidate elections. This particular ballot really doesn't have the same type of high profile measure that we've seen in the past, but it is often a very strong motivator for voter participation and turnout," said Schnur.