More than 500K NYC voters cast their ballots Tuesday morning

More than 500,000 New York City voters had cast their ballots as of noon Tuesday in the presidential race, according to tabulations from the city's Board of Elections .

The polls close at 9 p.m. tonight. More than 1 million votes were cast during the nine-day early voting period between Oct. 26 and Nov. 3, according to the BOE.

The turnout rate in the city for the 2020 presidential election was 53%, while the rate in 2016 was 56%. There are more than 5 million registered voters in the city.

The day started with a steady drip of voters at polling stations across the city, including in Brooklyn, where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York's top Democrat on Capitol Hill, said he's confident Vice President Kamala Harris will be elected president.

"She's the candidate talking about helping average folks, with lowering their costs, with getting better housing, with making sure the tax system is fair," Schumer told reporters after casting his vote at PS 321 in Park Slope. "Donald Trump spends all his time criticizing other people, talking about who his enemies are, saying he's not going to trust the results of the election. It's an obvious choice for the American people: One person who cares about the American people, the other who's consumed with his own ego."

Schumer, whose party leads the Senate with a razor-thin 51-49 majority, said he's also "cautiously optimistic" he'll retain the majority in the upper chamber, and that the House will flip into Democratic hands as well.

"A year and a half ago, everyone said we had no chance of winning the Senate. Now we're right in the hunt," he said.

There are six battleground House seats in New York that Democrats are hoping to win. None of them are in the city, and five of them are currently represented by Republicans.