Early Voting Passes 53 Million on Sunday Morning, Election Lab Count Shows, With Texas Past Seven Million

HOUSTON - More than 53 million Americans had already voted in the 2026 midterm elections by Sunday morning, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab, whose analysis put early voting at 53.14 million as of 6:56 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, Nov. 1, out of about 210 million registered voters.

The count, reported Sunday, listed about 29 million in-person votes and 23 million mail ballots in the Lab's rounded breakdown. It extends a record run: the Lab's tally was 51.31 million as of Saturday afternoon and more than 50.5 million on Saturday morning, and the entire early vote in the 2022 midterm cycle was 45.9 million - a total this year's voters passed days ago, with in-person early voting alone (more than 28 million by Saturday) already far beyond the roughly 20.5 million in-person early ballots cast in all of 2022.

Texas shows the surge most clearly. More than seven million people in the state voted early, according to the Election Lab figures - about 1.5 million more than voted early in Texas during the whole 2022 cycle. In Harris County, an Associated Press analysis found 862,700 people had voted by Wednesday, compared with 564,500 at the same point in 2022; the county's final early-vote total, a record 1,081,010, was reported by this station on Sunday.

The numbers describe participation, not outcomes: ballots are not tallied by candidate before Election Day, and a voter's early ballot says nothing about the choices on it. What remains is Tuesday, November 3, when polls decide control of Congress for the remaining years of President Donald Trump's second term - all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are being contested - and when Harris County's Election Day vote centers are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.