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Pre-election voting is declining across the country, with many states ending in-person early voting over the weekend.

More than 78 million ballots have already been cast in 47 states and the District of Columbia, according to CNN, Edison Research and Catalist, a company that provides data, analysis and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit advocacy groups Vote in November.

The data gives a sense of who decides to vote before Election Day, but it is not predictive of election results. For example, we don't know who people are voting for, and the data doesn't take into account the millions of Americans who will go to the polls on Tuesday.

But with less than 24 hours until polls open across the country, here are three key takeaways from what we know about those who decided to vote before November 5th.

Across the country, significantly fewer voters chose to vote before Election Day this year than in the pandemic-era 2020 election.

Four years ago, more than 110 million Americans voted early in person or by mail — about 70% of all voters in this election.

We won't know the final total number of voters in 2024 for weeks until all results are fully counted, but pre-election voting is expected to account for about 50% of all ballots – a split in the electorate that is more likely to occur is similar to the 2022 intermediate exams.

While pre-election voting is down overall, more voters in some states have chosen to vote in person earlier than in 2020.

The key states of North Carolina and Georgia both turned out record numbers of voters in early in-person voting, with totals in Georgia surpassing 2020 numbers. However, the total number of pre-election voters in North Carolina was still below four years ago because significantly fewer people chose to vote by mail.

Voting by mail has been a particularly popular option during the pandemic as voters sought to avoid crowds at polling stations. However, it is also more difficult to vote by postal vote in both states today than it was four years ago.

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Republicans accounted for more votes than in 2020. The Trump campaign made greater efforts this year to encourage Republicans to vote early and by mail, a significant departure from anti-voting communications before the 2020 election represents.

In the 27 states for which Catalist has comparable data, registered Democrats cast 37% of pre-election votes, while registered Republicans cast 35%. That's a significant widening of the partisan divide since 2020, when at the same time and in the same states, registered Democrats had a 12 percentage point advantage – 42% to 30%.

In four of the seven key states likely to decide the presidential election, voters are registering by party, and in each of them Republicans have accounted for a larger share of the primary vote than at the same time four years ago. Democrats in these states have overall decreased their share compared to 2020.

In Arizona, 41% of primary voters were Republican, an increase of 4 percentage points from 2020. Democrats reached 33%, a share that is 3 percentage points lower than four years ago.

Republicans in Nevada have increased their share by just one point since 2020, to 37%, while Democrats' share there has declined compared to four years ago, from 38% at this point in 2020 to 34% now.

In North Carolina, where Trump rallied with supporters on the final day of his campaign, Republicans accounted for 33% of the pre-election vote, compared with 31% in 2020. Democrats accounted for 32%, down 3 percentage points corresponds to their share four years ago.

And in critical Pennsylvania, Republicans got 33% of the vote before the election, a full 10 points more than in 2020, while Democrats got 56% – 10 points less.

Although Republicans have made up a larger share of primary voters so far compared to four years ago, recent CNN polls have generally shown Vice President Kamala Harris leading among voters who have already cast their ballots, including all contested ones States except Nevada.

The gender gap remains large, but has narrowed slightly since 2020

In the seven most competitive states, the gender gap looks similar to early voting in 2020 and 2022.

Overall, about 1.8 million more women than men voted early in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to Catalist data. However, this gap is smaller than at the same time four years ago. This is both because fewer people voted early overall and because the percentage gap is slightly smaller.

The gender gap is most pronounced in Georgia: 56% of early votes in the Peach State were cast by women, while 44% were cast by men. In Arizona, 52% of early voting votes were cast by women, while 46% were cast by men. And in North Carolina, 56% of early voting votes were cast by women, compared to 44% for men.

Nevada had the largest gender gap: 51% of primary votes were cast by women, compared to 47% by men.

In Pennsylvania, the state that could likely decide the race, women made up 56% of early voters. At the same time, in 2022 and 2020, 57% of the primary votes cast were women.

This story has been updated with additional information.