• Analysis
Early Voting Midterms: More Than 50m Americans Cast Ballots With Three Days to Go
More than 50.5 million Americans had cast early votes as of Saturday morning, three days before the 2026 midterm elections, according to a University of Florida analysis - nearly 5 million more than the total early vote in the 2022 midterms.
Turnout runs well ahead of 2022
Early voting in the midterms is running well ahead of the last cycle, with more than 50.5 million early votes cast nationwide as of Saturday morning by the University of Florida's count - nearly 5 million above the total for the whole 2022 early-vote period.
Per the Associated Press, several states are driving the surge:
- •South Carolina: early voting up 83% compared with 2022; Trump carried the state by nearly 18% in 2024
- •Kansas: early voting up 34%
- •Maine: up 44%
- •Michigan: up 32%
The increases cluster in states with close or key Senate races.
Party split among early voters
Among the states that collate party affiliation, 10.7 million registered Democrats have voted early so far, against 7.8 million registered Republicans. That gap reflects registration, not ballots: party affiliations are not indicative of actual votes cast.
Texas at the center of the Senate race
More than 7 million people have already voted early in Texas, 1.5 million more than did so during the 2022 midterms, per University of Florida data.
In Harris county, which includes Houston, an Associated Press analysis found 862,700 people had voted as of Wednesday, up from 564,500 at the same point in 2022. The county has leaned Democratic recently: Kamala Harris beat Trump there by nearly 6% in 2024, and Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred carried it by roughly 11% over the Republican incumbent senator Ted Cruz.
Two statewide contests are drawing money and attention:
- •Attorney general Ken Paxton, the Republican, is up against Democrat James Talarico in a closely watched Senate race
- •Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, faces Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa as he campaigns for another term
The Senate race has attracted spending in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas in more than three decades. Trump visited the state earlier this week, his third trip there in a month.
What the midterms will decide
Republicans are defending a 53-47 Senate majority. Democrats are aiming to pull off victories in traditionally conservative-leaning states such as Texas, Alaska and even Kansas - bids that could give them Senate control.
The House and Senate composition for the final two years of Trump's second term is on the ballot, with the rising costs of food, gasoline and other essentials, the Iran war and concern over government corruption forming the backdrop.
On the campaign trail, Trump has been stumping in states once considered safely Republican on behalf of endangered Republicans. At the same time he has drawn attention for repeatedly remarking on how candidates look, and for playing down worries over rising gasoline prices by pointing to what fossil fuel companies earn.
At a rally in Florida on Friday night, he said: "I thought this was it. I thought I could relax. Twenty-eight days of this crap in a row is a lot. It's a lot."
Election Day is Tuesday, with the early vote already past 50.5 million and control of the House and Senate still to be decided.
