Registered Democrats have a big lead over registered Republicans in early votes cast for the midterm elections, with more than 60.3 million total early votes reported across the country. Some 32,475,167 in-person votes had taken place while 27,843,980 mail ballots had been returned as of 2:16 p.m. ET on Tuesday, according to the University of Florida Election Lab.
Newsweek has mapped these out, showing a snapshot of participation ahead of Election Day voting. Out of the 27 states reporting party registration figures, 12,699,997 registered Democrats had voted early by this point, accounting for 42.9 percent of the total, compared with 9,288,009 registered Republicans (31.4 percent). This party affiliation does not indicate which candidates these voters supported.
This Democratic lead follows a trend for the party since 2020. The previous record of 45.9 million early votes set during the 2022 midterms was already surpassed by Friday evening, when 49.6 million had been cast. America’s most populous states, Texas, California and Florida, reported the highest numbers of early votes, with 7,736,594, 7,132,379 and 5,475,004, respectively.
Meanwhile, Wyoming reported the smallest early voting total (65,264) followed by South Dakota (81,367) and Alaska (99,424). Several battleground states also show significant voting numbers—Georgia (2.8 million), Michigan (2.4 million), North Carolina (2.8 million) and Ohio (1.7 million). As of 2026, 47 states and Washington, D.C., allow early voting.
Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire are the only three states that do not allow the practice. Analysis by the reveals a significant jump in the number of people using early voting in Texas, which saw a 50 percent increase compared with four years ago. Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and Kansas have also seen advance voting jump by more than 30 percent.
Both parties have encouraged people to vote early this year. President Donald Trump has historically spoken out against early voting by mail and pursued restrictions on it, arguing that the method is vulnerable to fraud and consistently blaming the method of voting for his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. No audit or investigation has offered evidence to back those claims.
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