Midterm Early Voting Passes 43 Million Ballots as Texas Leads the Surge

More than 43 million Americans had already voted by Thursday 29 October 2026, five days before Election Day, according to data compiled by the University of Florida’s Election Lab from state election offices. Reuters, reporting on Thursday evening, put the figure slightly higher, at more than 44 million — less than two million short of the total early vote in the entire 2022 midterm cycle. By any measure, the early vote in the 2026 midterms is running at a pace that has surprised even experienced election watchers, and it has already passed several historical benchmarks with days of voting still to go.

The Election Lab says four to five million early votes have been landing each day, a faster pace than in most previous cycles. The count climbed from about 23 million on 24 October to more than 43 million by 29 October — roughly doubling in five days as early-voting windows opened across more states and voters who had been waiting for the final week began to cast ballots. By 28 October, 40.5 million ballots had already been cast, passing the roughly 39.1 million early votes recorded in all of 2018 and the 40.1 million banked by the final weekend of 2022 on a same-point comparison. Those comparisons matter because they show this is not merely a large number in isolation; it is a large number earlier than usual.

Texas leads the early voting surge

Texas leads the surge, and by a wide margin. More than 5.8 million ballots have been cast there, about 1.75 million above the state’s entire 2022 early total, and about 70 percent of its total 2022 turnout, according to Election Lab director Professor Michael McDonald. Texas is the second-largest state by population and a central battleground in the fight for the Senate, so its numbers carry weight beyond their size. A state that has already banked 70 percent of its previous midterm turnout before Election Day has fundamentally changed the shape of the election: the remaining question is not whether Texans will vote, but how many of those who have not yet voted will turn out on Tuesday, and which candidates they will choose.

Several factors may explain the Texas surge, though none can be confirmed from the vote counts alone. The state has competitive races up and down the ballot, including a Senate contest that has drawn national attention and enormous spending. Early voting is well established in Texas, with a long window and many locations. And the national political climate — with control of Congress at stake and intense media coverage of the campaign’s final days — may be motivating voters who in other years would have waited. What is clear is that the surge is not a quirk of one county or one day; it is broad, sustained and already historically large.

Nationally, the scale of the early vote is also striking in relation to the last midterms. About 122 million Americans voted in the 2022 midterms in total, so the early count by 29 October already represented more than a third of that total — before Election Day itself, before the final weekend of early voting in states where it remained open, and before mail ballots postmarked by Election Day had been fully counted. The final turnout figure will be higher, perhaps substantially so, and it will take days or weeks after Tuesday to settle as states count mail ballots and certify results.

Midterm early voting party shares explained

In states that record party registration, registered Democrats account for about 44 percent of early ballots, Republicans 31.2 percent, and voters with no party affiliation 24.7 percent, in the Thursday figures. Those numbers have attracted considerable attention, and they deserve careful explanation, because they are easy to misread. First, they cover only about half the states that collect party data — 27 states with formal party registration — so they are not a national sample of all early voters. Second, party registration is not the vote cast: a registered Democrat can vote for a Republican, a registered Republican can vote for a Democrat, and unaffiliated voters, who make up nearly a quarter of the early ballots in these states, can vote either way. Third, and most importantly, early voting is only part of the election.

Analysts quoted in reporting stress that early-vote party shares do not predict the result, and McDonald is among those who have made that warning explicitly. The reason is historical: Election Day voting has traditionally tilted more Republican, as Republican voters have been more likely to vote in person on the day itself, while Democratic voters have been more likely to vote early or by mail. A Democratic lead in early ballots is therefore consistent with a close election, a Democratic win, or even a Republican win, depending on how large the Election Day vote is and how it breaks. The early numbers describe who has voted so far, not who will win.

That caution applies equally to both parties’ spin. Democrats can fairly say that their voters are turning out early in large numbers, which banks votes and reduces the risk that bad weather, long lines or other Election Day problems will suppress their turnout. Republicans can fairly say that their voters have yet to vote in large numbers, and that the Election Day surge they have historically relied on is still to come. Neither claim is a prediction, and both can be true at the same time. The only number that will settle the argument is the final count, and that count does not exist yet.

What is at stake on Tuesday

All 435 House seats and 35 of 100 Senate seats are on the ballot, and control of Congress for the final two years of Trump’s second term is at stake. That is the prize that has driven the spending, the campaigning and the turnout. If Democrats win the House, they will gain subpoena power, control of committees and the ability to block legislation, even if Republicans hold the Senate or the presidency. If Republicans hold both chambers, the administration will retain a freer hand for its legislative agenda. If the chambers split, the result will be divided government, with negotiation — or gridlock — as the defining feature of the next two years.

Early voting was expected to taper as states closed their early-voting windows in the days before Election Day. That tapering is normal and does not indicate a loss of enthusiasm; it reflects the calendar, as windows shut and voters who have not yet voted shift to Election Day plans. The final early-vote total will therefore be somewhat higher than the 43–44 million recorded on Thursday, but the bulk of the remaining votes will be cast on Tuesday itself, in person, across thousands of polling places.

For voters who have not yet cast a ballot, the practical message is simple: check your state’s deadline and polling place, and do not assume that the early-vote headlines tell you how the election will end. For observers, the message is equally simple: the early vote is a story about participation, and participation in 2026 is running high. Whether that participation favours one party or the other, and whether it produces a change in control of Congress, will only be known when the ballots — early, mail and Election Day alike — are counted. The surge is real. The result is not yet decided, and anyone who claims otherwise from early-vote shares alone is reading more into the numbers than they can bear. Voters in Texas and across the country still have the final say, and the final say comes on Tuesday.

Sources

USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Reuters, Kahawa Tungu and Albeu.