Bay Area volunteers encourage early voting as they count down to Election Day

With 10 days until the election, and early voting already stating, volunteers are making their final pleas to voters.

More than 100 South Bay volunteers loaded onto buses Saturday morning to head to Reno, Nevada.

"Research shows 100%, and our experience as political organizers, it shows that knocking on someone’s door and talking to them is overwhelmingly the way to influence their vote and get them to vote," Bill James, chair of the Santa Clara County Democratic Party.

One of the volunteers on the bus, Aaron Schuman, said he hasn’t made a trip like this for a candidate since the 1970s. 

"I feel that this election is a critical election that really the future of the country is at stake," said Schuman of Mountain View.

"I’m a hardworking middle-class American, I’m very patriotic. And I see that our democracy is really on the line here," said another volunteer, Kathleen Conley of Los Gatos. "We have a choice with a candidate who has fresh new ideas. She brings a huge amount of energy and positivity, which I believe we really need."

Buses also left Berkeley and San Francisco. Local Republican volunteers are focusing their efforts in the Bay Area.

"They’re knocking on doors, they’re making phone calls for our local candidates. We have a lot of really good candidates across the board. Some of them are in races that are probably winnable," said Jason Clark, the Bay Area Regional Vice Chairman for the California Republican Party.

Clark said about 40,000 new Republicans have registered in the Bay Area in the last few months.

Many early voting sites opened this weekend. Early voting has become more popular after 2020, and it was largely dominated by Democrats. 

But so far, data shows Republicans have cast more early ballots in Arizona and Nevada while more Democrats have voted early in Pennsylvania.

"Out of the 3.5 million people so far who voted in California early, over 1 million of those are Republicans. And I think about 1.7 million are Democrats. So we’re trending very well. And 30% or more of the ballots returned so far are Republican, which is above what it was this time last election cycle," said Clark.