Democrats Favored in Early Vote, Buoyed By Minority Voters
In-person early voting is up compared to the last midterm in 2022
With just over a week until Election Day, early votes are pouring in with returns favoring Democrats in almost every state. In some states, rates of early voting are even on track to surpass previous midterms.
So far in 2026, voters across the country have cast around 29 million early votes, with over 14 million cast in person and 14 million cast via an absentee ballot. For context, in 2022 a total of 46 million voters voted early with 20 million voting in person and 25 million voting by mail. The numbers are still a far reach from 2024 early voting rates, in which the presidential election saw some 86 million total early votes cast.
The early vote has also jumped in key states, including Texas, where, according to the University of Florida Election Lab early vote tracker, the early vote has already surpassed 51% of the total early vote recorded in 2022. Similarly, in North Carolina, voters have already returned nearly 42% of the total early vote from the last midterm election. In Georgia, the total is already around 45% of the early vote recorded in 2022.
In all but five states that record early vote data, the returns appear to be favoring Democrats, as measured by the party registration of the voters casting their ballots. Notably in Nebraska, Democrats are currently ahead by nearly 14 points by party registration. Similarly, in Iowa, Democrats are favored by about 10 points.
According to Michael McDonald, who runs the Election Lab, the early vote turnout bump is in part fueled by high rates of voting by Black and Hispanic voters across the south.
This data comes even as some signs suggest that a portion of voters have serious concerns as to whether or not their mail-in ballot will be properly counted, owing to threats of interference by the Trump administration.
According to a Pew Research survey, about 25 percent of voters said that they are not confident that ballots would be delivered to voters with enough time to return them. Over 30 percent said that they were not confident that the Postal Service would return mail in ballots to election offices in time for their ballots to be counted.
Among voters inclined to support Democrats, 28 percent said that they were not confident that the Postal Service would deliver their ballots in time to be counted. Among Republican leaning voters, 35 percent said the same.
