The early voting record is already in the books: 49.6 million early votes have been cast this midterm cycle, more than the 45.9 million cast in all of 2022. That total comes from Newsweek’s Friday-evening count, and it moves by the hour. Early Friday the University of Florida Election Lab tally, relayed by Iowa Capital Dispatch, stood at 46 million. Check the source and the timestamp before you repeat a figure at the dinner table.
By evening, about 22.9 million of those were mail ballots and 26.8 million were in-person votes. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
How big is this record early vote?
The “record” means this year’s early vote so far has already beaten the entire early vote from 2022. That is still a big deal. About 122 million Americans voted in total in 2022, according to TIME. Roughly 33 million early votes on Oct. 27 was already more than a quarter of that.
Early voting has become the norm, not the exception. Half of 2022 midterm ballots were cast before Election Day. So were 60% in 2024, per No Labels, citing MIT survey data.
Who is behind the early voting surge?
In the states that track party registration, Democrats lead the early vote. Friday evening’s tally showed about 10.3 million Democrats (43%), 7.5 million Republicans (32%), and 5.9 million unaffiliated or minor-party voters (25%), per Newsweek. Only 27 states report early voting by party, so this is a partial picture.
Age matters too. About half of early voters with age data are 65 or older, and only 4.5% are 18 to 25. Older voters have long dominated midterm electorates, so the lopsided split is familiar. The early-voting surge has not yet changed that. Hispanic voters, however, are turning out early at higher rates than in other recent elections, according to The Washington Post.
Texas is leading the pack
Texas had more than 6.4 million early ballots through Thursday. That beats its 2018 record of 5.5 million, The Dallas Morning News reported. That count leaves out mail ballots, and Friday was the final early-voting day.
The state has more than 19 million registered voters, up about 3 million since 2018. At the top of the ballot sits a Senate race pitting Republican Ken Paxton against Democrat James Talarico, and midterm early turnout there is huge. Our report on nearly 5 million Texans voting early in a tied Senate race has the details.
Can you still vote this weekend?
Whether you can still vote early depends entirely on where you live, and the rules change at the state line. Early voting ends Saturday in about 20 states, per Newsweek and Quartz. The two outlets count the states slightly differently. Here is what the reporting shows:
- Saturday, Oct. 31 is the last day in Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina.
- Through Sunday, Nov. 1: Connecticut, Delaware and New Jersey, per Quartz.
- Michigan: in-person early voting runs through Sunday, Nov. 1, and there is none on Monday. It is too late to request an absentee ballot. Mail voters should use a drop box, FOX 2 Detroit reports.
- Virginia: voter registration offices are open for early voting Saturday, per the state elections department.
- Oklahoma: no early voting Sunday or Monday.
Hours and locations vary by county, so check your state or county election office before you drive anywhere. Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire do not offer early voting at all, per Newsweek.
What an early voting record does not tell us
It is tempting to read the party split like a scoreboard. Don’t. Early-vote share is not a forecast, and treating it like one is how pundits end up eating their predictions on Wednesday.
Harris County, Texas, set early-vote records in 2018 and Democrats still lost statewide, as No Labels noted. Voters who wait until Tuesday are a big, unknown chunk of the electorate. Republicans have historically leaned on Election Day.
The state-level picture is also uneven. Kansas had nearly 1.5 times its 2022 early vote at the same point, per NBC News. Iowa, meanwhile, was running behind its 2022 pace. That gap shows how much local rules and habits shape the totals.
What happens next
Outstanding mail ballots will push the early total higher. Michael McDonald leads the Election Lab at the University of Florida. The political scientist says overall turnout is on pace to match 2018, per Iowa Capital Dispatch. That year turnout hit 53%, the highest rate for a midterm since 1914.
A political scientist told The Dallas Morning News that Texas could see as many as 10 million ballots. Its 2018 record is 8.3 million. Meanwhile, our look at why the Senate is still a toss-up despite an 8-point polling gap shows how little these early numbers settle.
So the real question is not whether early voting set a record. It did. It is who is still sitting on a ballot, and whether they show up Tuesday. Polls open Nov. 3.
