Early Voting Surges Past 34 Million Nationwide, Running Even With the 2018 Midterm Benchmark

The early vote in the 2026 midterms has passed 34 million people, and it is still climbing. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 34 million Americans had cast a ballot in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida Election Lab, which tracks early voting - a tally on track to surpass the early voting of the 2022 midterms, when nearly 46 million Americans voted early, said Michael McDonald, the UF political science professor who runs the lab.

"Right now, the data that I can see, it looks like we're running at least even to the 2018 election. If the voting continues through Election Day, we would be somewhere around that number," McDonald said. "That's a high water benchmark," he added - the 2018 election was the highest-turnout midterm since 1914. In the 27 states that record party affiliation, the early electorate so far is about 45 percent Democrats, 31 percent Republicans and 24 percent unaffiliated, out of roughly 16 million early voters in those states. Reporting also shows a shift in how people are voting early: in North Carolina, for example, the early total of 1.7 million is up 42 percent from 2022 while mail ballots are down about 34 percent.

McDonald himself supplies the caution that belongs with every one of those numbers: he said he cannot tell from the data what is motivating the surge, offering as one idea a post-COVID reversion - voters less likely to vote by mail, returning to in-person habits. Early totals measure participation, not preference, and in states like Texas, which records no party for its early voters at all, the composition is modeling rather than counting. What is certain, one week before the November 3 election that decides control of the House and the Senate, is the scale: tens of millions of votes are already in, and Election Day will add the rest.