Republicans have cut into Democrats' recent advantage in early voting " including in key battleground states " putting Vice President Kamala Harris behind where Democrats were four years ago in the preliminary vote tally. It follows a concerted effort by Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign to encourage supporters to embrace early voting, including voting by mail, after the former president demonized the practice as the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic clashed with the 2020 election. Trump during a campaign rally Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia, boasted about the critical swing state's record-setting early-vote numbers, declaring "people have never seen anything like it." But election data experts say there's no clear conclusion to draw from the Republicans' early-voting gains, and Harris allies insist the trend is not a cause for their troops to panic.