More than 28 million Americans have already voted in the 2026 midterms, just over a week before Election Day, according to data from the University of Florida Election Laboratory.
The election lab tracks mail-in and in-person votes, with several thousand ballots cast in key battleground states like Michigan and Ohio.
Early voting for upcoming elections exceeds 2022 numbers. An Associated Press (AP) analysis found that early voting increased 74% in Texas compared to the same time in 2022, while Kansas more than doubled its early voting total. Maine, North Carolina and Ohio also saw more than 30% increases in in-person and mail-in early voting.
But even though early voting is booming compared to the last 2022 midterm elections, it’s important to keep in mind that the majority will vote in person that day, meaning that even with higher early voting numbers, it’s not possible to draw conclusions about the results at this point.
Who votes early?
The states voting the earliest so far are Texas, with more than 4 million, California with 3.1 million, Florida with 2.7 million, North Carolina with 1.5 million and Virginia with more than 1.1 million. There is no data yet for Alabama or New Hampshire.
Among those numbers, the University of Florida Election Lab also breaks down some states’ early voters based on their demographics.
The theses show that among more than 6.9 million early voters covered by age data, 50.4 percent of them were aged over 65, while only 4.5 percent were aged 18 to 25.
The data also shows that registered Democrats cast more votes than registered Republicans in reporting states. Of the 13.7 million voters in states where political registration was recorded, 45.1 percent of early voters were registered Democrats, compared to 30.7 percent of Republicans.
Racial and ethnic demographics are only recorded in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina, but found that 59.4 percent of early voters were non-Hispanic whites, followed by 28.4 percent non-Hispanic blacks.
Gender data showed a lower distribution, with 54 percent women and 44.3 percent men registered among early voters.
Promotes early voting
Republicans and Democrats have pushed the public to consider early voting, and President Trump himself voted early in Florida on October 24 alongside first lady Melania Trump before heading to campaign in Georgia.
The Republican National Committee has relaunched the Swamp the Vote USA site, initially created to rally supporters of early and mail-in voting in the 2024 election.
“President Trump and the Republicans won last November by making the election too important to rig and planning to vote early. Now it’s up to us to win in 2026 by overwhelming the vote again,” the site reads.
President Trump and Vice President JD Vance are on the campaign trail as the election approaches, with the president visiting Mississippi, Texas, Ohio, Florida and Iowa in the coming days. Vance will be in Montana, Kansas and Michigan.
At the same time, Democrats are also working to promote early voting. The Association of State Democratic Committees, an arm of the Democratic National Committee, launched its new midterm battleground project. Part of the nationwide operation is explicitly about pushing voters to vote early, alongside election monitoring and combating election misinformation.
Barack Obama has also joined Democrats’ late midterm voter turnout campaign, scheduling campaign appearances in Michigan, Ohio and Georgia in recent weeks as early voting has expanded.
Newsweek reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Robert Greenall And Rebecca Flood
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