Looks like the 2020 ticks are including mail in voting in 2020, which was heavily expanded during the pandemic. Places like North Carolina and Texas have immediately gone back to restricting absentee ballots. So yes there are less early votes, because they’ve gone back to restricting mail ballots.
Here I see there were just over 1 million votes by mail in North Carolina in 2020. Here I see that there were about 240,000 votes by mail in North Carolina through the 2nd. You could probably find a more up to date number, but you get the idea.
Yes, like a mail in vote that arrived on election day. It wouldn’t be included in today’s “early voting” numbers, but it would have been included in the total number of mail in votes in 2020 that I’m comparing it too. But don’t expect a big change.
The 2020 numbers might be deceiving and impossible to compare to. Mail in voting was heavily expanded, which skewed Democrat, so early voting results in 2020 skewed Democrat. Then election day skewed more Republican than normal too. It’s not going to follow that exact pattern again.