Photo: KOMUnews, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. File photo of a polling place in Columbia, Missouri, not a photo of 2026 early voting.
A record number of Americans have already cast their ballots in the 2026 midterm elections, with nearly 48 million early votes banked days before Election Day on November 3.
The University of Florida's Election Lab had recorded 47,922,669 early votes nationwide by midday on Friday, October 30, surpassing the previous midterm record of 45.9 million early votes cast ahead of Election Day in 2022. With four days of voting still to go at that point, the total was already the highest early turnout ever recorded in a midterm election.
Measured five days before Election Day, more than 10 million additional voters had taken part in early voting this year compared with the same point in 2022, according to Associated Press reporting of the figures.
Surge in the battlegrounds
The surge has been especially pronounced in states with fiercely contested Senate races that could decide control of the chamber during the final two years of President Donald Trump's presidency. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win back the Senate majority, while Republicans are defending narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate.
Texas recorded more than six million early votes by Wednesday, with in-person turnout running around 50 percent ahead of the same stage in 2022. In Georgia, in-person early voting broke the state's midterm record on Thursday.
University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald, who oversees the Election Lab, has pointed to rising participation among Black and Hispanic voters in states that report racial and ethnic data, with particularly strong turnout in heavily Hispanic communities along the Texas-Mexico border. In Georgia, women accounted for 56 percent of early voters by Thursday, compared with 44 percent for men.
Democrats lead the early vote — with a warning attached
In states that track voters by party registration, registered Democrats made up around 44 percent of early voters, compared with 31 percent for Republicans and 25 percent for unaffiliated and minor-party voters.
But experts warn against reading the 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 itself. Nor does a record early vote necessarily mean record overall turnout: some voters may simply be choosing to vote earlier than in previous years rather than adding to the total.
That caution matters in a campaign fought against an unusually charged backdrop. The election comes days after a bruising week on Wall Street, a string of court rulings over the administration's election oversight, and a debate over health care costs as open enrollment for 2027 coverage opens on November 1.
What happens next
Early voting continues into the final weekend in many states, and the last ballots will be cast on Tuesday, November 3. Because several competitive states use ranked-choice voting or allow mail ballots to arrive after Election Day, some races — notably the Alaska Senate contest — could take days or weeks to call.
For now, the one certainty is the scale of participation: more Americans have voted before Election Day in this midterm than in any midterm before it, and the final tally will climb higher still before the polls close.
Sources: University of Florida Election Lab figures via the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse; Channels Television; News18.