With former President Donald Trump’s encouragement, Republicans are voting early again, flocking to the polls for in-person voting ahead of Election Day and helping push the national number to nearly 19 million.

The early turnout is breaking records in swing states such as Georgia and North Carolina.

The GOP hopes this surge of early votes will fix a mechanical problem that some in the party blame for costing it the 2020 presidential election and key races in 2022. Campaigns usually want their voters to cast ballots ahead of Election Day so they can focus their resources on getting more marginal supporters to the polls at the last minute.

Republicans excelled at that before Trump turned against early in-person and mail voting in 2020, as he spun wild conspiracies about the process and convinced his supporters to wait until Election Day to cast their ballots. But the party is again pushing its voters to cast their ballots early, and the former president is largely encouraging the change.

“I am telling everyone to vote early,” Trump said on a podcast last week hosted by conservative Dan Bongino, who has widely spread false information about early voting and the 2020 election.

Republicans seem to be responding. In Nevada, where Democrats for decades relied on a robust early vote to counter the GOP on Election Day, about 6,000 more Republicans than Democrats had actually cast early ballots this year as of Tuesday, according to Associated Press research.

It’s unclear what this means for the election, however. The early vote data only reveals whether voters are registered with a party, not who they are voting for, and the early electorate can change from day to day as more people vote early.

The surge in 2020 Democratic early voting was largely a reaction to a pandemic that no longer exists, skewing historic comparisons. And what might seem like demographic trends in the early vote can suddenly disappear once Election Day votes are factored in.

It also is still very early in the voting process. The last of the seven swing states, Wisconsin, kicked off its early voting Tuesday morning, and the 17.4 million voters who already have cast ballots this year represent only about 11% of the number of total ballots in the 2020 presidential election. Parties can run up leads in the early vote and then see them vanish on Election Day because all their supporters have already cast ballots and the other side has not.

“The Democrats are still, as far as I can tell, banking more early votes. It’s just less of a disadvantage for Republicans,” said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who carefully tracks the early vote. But, McDonald cautioned, “we don’t know if this is a shifting of furniture yet or an added strength for Republicans.”

One thing is clear — the return to bipartisan early voting has helped bust records. North Carolina and Georgia both reported record turnout on their first day of in-person early voting, despite the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene, and it has spilled over into states that aren’t competitive at the presidential level, such as South Carolina, which reported its own record when it opened early voting Monday.

James Blair, the political director for Trump’s campaign, said its data shows that more of its low-propensity voters are casting ballots early than those who might be expected to support Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The starting point is, we’re in a strong spot,” Blair said.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.