With less than a week till Election Day, voters in at least 24 states have surpassed overall early absentee voting numbers from 2014.  More than 20 million votes have been cast already, a rate on track to double the early absentee vote totals of 2014.

Populous states like Texas, which has a closely watched Senate race and a handful of competitive House races this year, are giving a big boost to overall advance voting turnout.  But early turnout is high even in some states without competitive elections, like Maryland and Virginia.

In Maryland, where eight days of voting ended Thursday night, elections officials say 16.7 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot early — up from 8.3 percent in 2014.  In all, 661,276 votes were cast, compared with 307,646 votes cast overall in 2014.

Virginians cast 245,639 mailed or in-person absentee ballots as of Thursday afternoon — nearly double the 2014 total of 123,221, according to the most recent state statistics.  That jump is sharply reflected in Fairfax County, the state’s most-populous jurisdiction, where 61,880 absentee ballots had been cast as of Thursday, compared with a total of 28,662 in 2014.  Voters can continue to show up for in-person absentee ballot voting until Saturday.

In Maine, 34 percent more absentee ballots have been submitted so far this year than in 2014, contributing to a projected turnout of 65 percent for what is expected to be a closely contested race for governor.

Two other states that show a boost in voter participation so far are Florida and Nevada, which both feature competitive races for Senate and governor.  In Nevada, a total of about 308,000 voters cast early, absentee or mail-in ballots in 2014, according to state data.  As of early Wednesday, with three more days of in-person early voting to go, the figure for this year was at 463,016.

In Florida, 3.4 million voters have cast ballots early or by mail, compared with a total of 3.2 million in 2014, according to the state.  Voters have until Saturday to vote early in person and have until Tuesday to return their ballots.