Vice President Kamala Harris made her case to voters in Georgia late Saturday, seeking to appeal to early voters who are turning out in record numbers in the battleground state.

Since early voting began this week in Georgia, more than 1 million voters have cast ballots, a record turnout for early voting in the state, according to other Georgia Secretary of State’s office. 

Ms. Harris is essentially tied with former President Donald Trump in the Peach State. Polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight has Mr. Trump ahead by roughly 2 points, 48.8% to 46.9%. RealClearPolling says the race is much closer with Mr. Trump ahead by 1.1 points on average. 

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At a rally outside of Atlanta on Saturday, Ms. Harris hosted a get-out-the-vote event with Usher, who attended high school in the area. 

“So Georgia, now is our time to act. The baton is in our hands. Election Day is 17 days away and early voting has already started,” she said. “You guys are setting some records, by the way.”

Ms. Harris also referenced former President Jimmy Carter, who cast his vote by mail earlier this week.

“Georgia’s own president, Jimmy Carter, voted early…just days after his 100th birthday. So if Jimmy Carter can vote early you can too,” she told the crowd.

As of Friday evening, 1.2 million votes had been cast in Georgia, which accounts for 16.7% of active voters in the state, according to the Secretary of State. The majority of the votes, roughly 1.13 million, were cast in person.

The first day of early voting saw more than 310,000 votes cast in person on Tuesday, more than double the number of voters who showed up on the first day of early voting in 2020. That year, President Biden beat Mr. Trump by just over 11,000 votes in Georgia.

Both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris see positive signs in the early voting results. 

The counties with the highest turnout on the first day of early voting were won by Democrats four years ago, including Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett — all some of the most urban and Democratic areas in Georgia.

But since then, the counties with the highest turnouts are places Mr. Trump won overwhelmingly in the last election, according to the Secretary of State’s election dashboard. 

Towns County, a rural area that borders South Carolina, led the state as of Friday evening with nearly 30% of active voters casting a ballot. Mr. Trump won the county with 80% of the vote in 2020. 

Rabin County, another rural area in the northern part of the state has had the second-highest turnout with more than 25% of voters casting a ballot so far. Mr. Trump won 62.8% of the vote there in 2020, compared to 36.3% of the voters who backed Mr. Biden.

Among the counties that Mr. Biden won in 2020, Baldwin County, which sits near Macon, has the highest early voting turnout with 19% of voters showing up as of Friday.

James Blair, Political Director of the Trump 2023 Campaign and Republican National Committee, said he believes early voting is “going quite well.” 

“We think it is going quite well. We think that there is - as of the third day [of early voting] about a 23-point swing in our favor from the same point in 2020,” Mr. Blair said, noting the share of the White vote is up, and the Black vote is down.

Josh McKoon, chair of the Georgia GOP, rejected the idea that the early vote totals were good news for Democrats. 

He said Democrats likely need to win 90% of the African American vote and for it to comprise a third of the overall vote. The early vote total showed the Black vote hovering under 28%.

“Those are pretty big red flags,” Mr. McKoon said. He said she suspects that is why Ms. Harris plans to appear with former  President Barack Obama at a black church. “You know, if your turnout game is working, you don’t have to have your candidate and one of your top surrogates in the same place at the same time.”

He said the Harris-Obama event is not a rally or a media event. “It’s showing up at a particular church in DeKalb County to try to get some momentum back, right?” he said.

He also said the initial early vote totals showed strong turnout in the seven Republican-held congressional Districts and that some of the GOP-friendly rural areas hit by the recent Hurricane also posted strong tallies.

Voters do not have to register by a party in Georgia.