Over 28 million Americans have already cast ballots in the 2026 midterms with just over a week until Election day, according to data from The University of Florida Election Lab.
The Election Lab tracks voting by mail and in-person, with many thousands of ballots cast in key battleground states like Michigan and Ohio.
Early voting for the upcoming election is outpacing 2022 numbers. An Associated Press (AP) analysis found early voting was up 74 percent in Texas compared to at the same point in 2022, while Kansas had more than doubled its total of early ballots. Maine, North Carolina and Ohio have also seen increases of more than 30 percent in early in-person and mail voting.
But while early voting is soaring when compared with the last midterms in 2022, it is important to remember that the majority will vote in person on the day, meaning that even with higher early voting numbers conclusions cannot be drawn about results at this stage.
Who Is Voting Early?
States with the most early ballots cast so far include 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 over 1.1 million. There is no data yet for Alabama or New Hampshire.
Among these numbers, The University of Florida’s Election Lab also breaks down some states' early voters by demographics.
Theses show that among over 6.9 million early voters covered by age data, 50.4 percent of these were aged over 65, while only 4.5 percent were aged 18-25.
Data also shows that registered Democrats have cast more votes that registered Republicans in reporting states. Of 13.7 million voters in states where political registration was recorded, 45.1 percent of early voters were registered Democrats compared with 30.7 percent Republicans.
Race and ethnic demographics are only recorded in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina, but revealed that 59.4 percent of early voters were non-Hispanic White, followed by 28.4 percent non-Hispanic Black.
Gender data showed a smaller split, with 54 percent female and 44.3 percent male recorded in early voters.
Pushes For Early Voting
Both Republicans and Democrats have pushed for 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, originally set up to rally supporters behind voting early and by mail in the 2024 election.
"President Trump and Republicans won last November by making the election Too Big To Rig and making a plan to vote early. Now, it is up to us to win in 2026 by Swamping the Vote once again," the site reads.
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President Trump and Vice President JD Vance are on the campaign trail in the run-up to the election, with the president visiting Mississippi, Texas, Ohio, Florida, and Iowa in coming days. Vance will be in Montana, Kansas, and Michigan.
Meanwhile, there is also a Democratic effort to push for early voting. The Association of State Democratic Committees, an arm of the Democratic National Committee, launched its New Battlefield Project for the midterms. Part of the nationwide operation is explicitly to push voters to cast ballots early, alongside poll monitoring and countering election disinformation.
Barack Obama has also joined the Democrats' late midterm turnout push, scheduling campaign appearances in Michigan, Ohio and Georgia in the closing weeks as early voting has expanded.
Newsweek’s 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