NEW CASTLE, Del. (AP) – President Joe Biden has early voting in the General election 2024.

It’s a bittersweet moment for Biden, who decided to do this end his re-election campaign in July amid growing concerns about his health and Democrats’ worries about his chances of defeating the former President Donald Trump. Biden voted Monday at the Delaware State Department of Elections, not far from his home outside Wilmington, Delaware, at an early voting site where voters lined up curbside to cast their ballots.

Biden chatted with voters as he waited in line to cast his ballot, helping push an elderly woman in a wheelchair who sat in front of him. The president waited in line for about 40 minutes before casting his vote.

He handed his ID to the poll worker, who had him sign a form and announced: “Joseph Biden is voting now.”

As the president cast his vote behind a black curtain, some first-time voters were announced and the room erupted in cheers.

Outside the polling station, Biden was asked whether he thought Democrats – including Vice President Kamala Harris – would win.

“I think we will,” he said.

Since 1970, Biden has been in office or running for office during election season almost every year.

But this year, his hopes rest on a newer generation of Democrats, including three on the Delaware ballot, who want to make history.

Harriswho supported Biden after she left office, wants to become the first black woman and first person of South Asian descent to take over as president.

State Senator Sarah McBride wants to become the first openly transgender member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

McBride, a longtime friend of the Biden family, had served as an adviser to the then-president Barack Obama and on the 2006 and 2010 campaigns for the president’s late son, Beau Biden, to run for Delaware attorney general. She also worked for former Delaware Governor Jack Markell.

McBride hopes to succeed Democratic Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochesterwho wants to become Delaware’s first black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. Since 2017, she has been Delaware’s only representative in the House of Representatives.

On Monday, Biden Blunt Rochester had breakfast. He has known her family for decades and fought alongside her father, Theodore “Ted” Blunt, who served on the Wilmington City Council for nearly a quarter century, including as president. Biden officially endorsed Blunt Rochester on Sunday evening, cutting a video for her campaign in which he called her out “Delaware through and through.”

Blunt Rochester is running to succeed Sen. Tom Carper, who has held the seat in the heavily Democratic state since 2001. He’s retiring.

Early voting in Delaware began Saturday.