Early Voting Tops 51 Million, a Midterm Record, Before Election Day
The total passed the entire early vote of 2022 with days still to go. In-person voting is driving the surge. The numbers show who has voted so far, not who will win.
More than 51 million Americans had already voted by Saturday afternoon, three days before the midterm elections. The total passed the entire early vote from the last midterms, with ballots still coming in by mail and at early voting sites in many states.
The University of Florida Election Lab put the total at 51.31 million as of 2:30 p.m. Saturday. In 2022, 45.9 million people voted before Election Day across the whole early voting period. The 2026 total passed that mark with days still to go.
In-person voting is driving the increase
More than 28 million people had voted early in person by Saturday, compared with about 20.5 million across the whole early voting period in 2022. A Friday evening count put the total at 49.6 million, including about 26.8 million in-person votes and 22.9 million returned mail ballots.
Texas shows the surge most clearly. More than seven million Texans had voted early, about 1.5 million more than the state’s whole early total in 2022. By Wednesday, 6.3 million Texans had voted, a 50 percent increase from the same point in 2022.
An Associated Press analysis found advance voting up 44 percent in Maine, 34 percent in Kansas and 32 percent in Michigan compared with the same stage of 2022. Michigan comes with a caveat. This is the state’s first midterm with statewide early in-person voting, approved by voters in November 2022, so part of its increase reflects a new option rather than higher demand alone.
Georgia’s secretary of state reported 2,294,275 people had voted early in person by 1:35 p.m. Thursday, already above the state’s 2022 total of 2,289,951 with a day of early voting still to run. North Carolina ended early in-person voting on Saturday afternoon. Its Election Day polling places open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
What the numbers do not say
Early totals describe participation, not results. In most states, ballots are not counted by candidate before Election Day, and the national total says nothing about which candidates the people who have already voted chose.
In the roughly 27 states that report the party registration of early voters, registered Democrats account for about 43 percent and Republicans about 32 percent, with independent or unaffiliated voters at about 25 percent, according to a Scripps News snapshot. In raw counts from Election Lab data, that is 10.7 million Democrats compared with 7.8 million Republicans. Registration is not a vote, and those states are a subset of the country, not the whole of it.
A record early total also does not guarantee higher final turnout. Some of it is people voting sooner who would otherwise have voted on Election Day. The missing piece is the Election Day electorate itself, which could narrow or widen the early registration balance once those votes are cast.
What is at stake on Tuesday is control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. All 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats are being contested. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority and a narrow edge in the House. Polls open across the country on Tuesday, November 3. Early voting windows are closing state by state, and the remaining vote follows local rules.
