Fired-up Staten Island residents have turned out in droves to vote early in this year’s elections.
More than one in five eligible voters in Richmond County — 21.58 percent — have already cast a ballot during the first six days of in-person early voting.
That’s the highest turnout rate of any county in New York state, according to an analysis by the state Board of Elections.
Sources said the high turnout on Staten Island is driven by the fiercely contested race for Congress between first-term Democratic incumbent Max Rose and Republican Assemblywoman and former mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis.
A recent poll showed the Rose-Malliotakis race is a virtual dead heat.
By comparison, about 14 percent of Brooklyn voters cast ballots at early voting sites through Thursday, followed by 14 percent of Manhattan voters, 11.7 percent of Queens voters and 11.6 percent of Bronx voters.
Statewide, 12.7 percent of eligible voters turned out.
More than 700,000 New York City residents have cast ballots at the early voting sites thus far. Early voting continues through Sunday before Election Day Tuesday.
The second-highest turnout rate after Staten Island was Erie County upstate, where 18 percent of eligible voters have turned out.
“We’re seeing a strong and steady turnout during every day of early voting. We’re confident that many of those voters are voting for Nicole Malliotakis,” said Malliotakis spokesman Rob Ryan.
Ryan said the overwhelming majority of Republican voters in the 11th Congressional District — which includes portions of southern Brooklyn as well as Staten Island — indicated they would vote early in-person or on Election Day instead of mailing in absentee ballots.
More than 1 million voters in the city also requested absentee ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic. It’s expected that most of the voters will mail in their ballots.
When all is said and done, more than half of all ballots could be cast before Election Day.
The Rose campaign said his supporters are also turning out.
“We’re seeing high turnout across the district. It’s going to be a high-turnout election,” said Rose campaign spokesman Jonas Edward-Jenks.
Early voting in the city has been marred by hours-long lines after the city Board of Elections bungled preparations by underestimating turnout, leaving poll sites jammed with a shortage of check-in pads, ballot printers and ballot scanning equipment to process voters.
The election agency has expanded hours this weekend to better handle the flow of voters.
It has also added a voting site at Marymount Manhattan College on the Upper East Side to relieve long lines at the nearby Robert Wagner Middle School polling site, which has 120,000 voters assigned to it — the largest in the city.