Nearly 47.9 million Americans had already cast their ballots ahead of the 2026 midterm elections by midday on Friday, October 30, setting a new record for early voting in a midterm election. Data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab put the nationwide total at 47,922,669 early votes, passing the previous midterm record of about 45.9 million early ballots cast before Election Day in 2022, with several days of early voting still to run in many states and millions more ballots expected on Election Day itself.
Election Day falls on Tuesday, November 3, when voters will decide control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, along with governors’ races and thousands of state and local contests. Republicans are defending a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and the early-voting surge has been sharpest in states with competitive Senate races that could determine control of the chamber for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s presidency.
Texas leads the surge
Texas has driven a large share of the increase. More than 6.3 million Texans had voted early by Wednesday, compared with 4.2 million at the same point in 2022, a rise of about 50 percent, according to official figures analysed by the Associated Press. In Harris County, which includes Houston, 862,700 people had voted by Wednesday, up from 564,500 at the same stage four years ago.
Texas voters are deciding closely watched Senate, House and governor’s races, and the state’s early-voting window ran through Friday, October 30. In-person early turnout in the state was running roughly 50 percent ahead of the same stage of the 2022 midterms, a pace that election officials and analysts described as exceptional for a midterm cycle.
Battleground states report sharp gains
Georgia recorded its own milestone on Thursday, when in-person early voting passed the state’s previous midterm record. Women accounted for 56 percent of ballots cast in Georgia by that day, compared with 44 percent for men, according to Election Lab figures.
Elsewhere, the gains were just as striking. North Carolina’s election board reported early voting up nearly 37 percent on the same point four years ago, while South Carolina passed its entire 2022 early-vote total on Monday, with five days of early voting still to go. Early voting in South Carolina is up 83 percent on 2022, in a state where voters are choosing a successor to the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
In Maine, where Republican Senator Susan Collins faces Democratic former state Senate President Troy Jackson, early voting is up 44 percent. Michigan has recorded roughly 409,000 more early votes than at the same point in 2022, an increase of about 32 percent, in the first midterm election in which early in-person voting is available statewide after voters approved the measure in November 2022. Early voting is also up more than 30 percent in Kansas and North Carolina.
Massachusetts reported 1,070,364 ballots already cast by 4 p.m. on Friday, a turnout of 20.5 percent, including 733,678 mail ballots returned and 336,686 votes cast in person, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office.
Democrats lead the early vote on party registration
In states that register voters by political party, registered Democrats account for a larger share of early ballots than Republicans. Election Lab figures put Democrats at about 44 percent of early voters in those states, compared with 31 percent for Republicans and 25 percent for unaffiliated or minor-party voters. An Associated Press analysis of the same data counted about 6.8 million Democrats and 5.2 million Republicans among early voters in states that report party affiliation, though those figures do not cover all early voters nationwide.
University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald, who leads the Election Lab, also pointed to increased participation among Black and Hispanic voters in states that provide racial and ethnic voting data, with particularly strong turnout in heavily Hispanic communities along the Texas-Mexico border.
Analysts cautioned, however, against reading the early-voting figures as a prediction of the outcome. A voter’s party registration does not reveal which candidates they supported, and tens of millions more Americans are expected to cast ballots on Tuesday. Republicans have historically recorded stronger participation on Election Day in some recent elections, and Election Day returns can still shift the final result.
What the record does and does not mean
Experts also warned that a rise in early ballots does not automatically mean overall turnout will rise by the same margin. Some voters may simply be casting their ballots earlier than they did in previous elections, rather than adding to the total number of people who vote.
An Associated Press analysis of voting data five days before Election Day found more than 43 million Americans had already voted early in person or returned mail ballots across 47 states and Washington, DC, nearly 10 million more than at the same point in 2022. The Election Lab’s later figure of 47.9 million, recorded by midday Friday, confirmed that the 2022 record had been broken outright before the early-voting window had even closed everywhere.
For campaigns, the practical consequence is a smaller and more unpredictable pool of voters left to persuade in the final days. With tens of millions of ballots already banked, both parties are now fighting over a shrinking group of Election Day voters and late deciders, in races where control of Congress may come down to a handful of states.
What happens next
Early voting has now ended in several states, including Georgia and Texas, while a few states still have early-voting hours open through the weekend. Attention now turns to Tuesday, November 3, when polls open across the country and the remaining tens of millions of voters cast their ballots in person.
Results in the closest Senate and House races may take days to settle, as mail ballots are counted and late-arriving votes are processed. Until then, the one firm conclusion from the early-voting numbers is about participation itself: Americans are voting earlier, and in greater numbers, than in any midterm election before.
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