More Than 43 Million Ballots Cast as Early Voting Surges Ahead of US Midterms

More than 43 million Americans have already voted in the US midterm elections, which will determine which party controls Congress for the next two years. Data from the University of Florida Election Lab shows that four to five million early votes are being cast each day, a far higher rate than in most previous elections. Professor Mike McDonald, who runs the database, says Texas has seen the highest above-average turnout rate so far, with Hispanic communities turning out at much higher levels than usual. Overall turnout appears on track to outpace 2020, and possibly even 2018, which set a record for overall turnout in a midterm election, surpassing the previous high from 1914. Texas has already exceeded its 2022 numbers by roughly 1.75 million voters, according to McDonald, with more than 5.8 million ballots cast in the state. Texas has emerged as a key battleground that could decide which party controls the Senate for the remainder of Donald Trump's presidency. In states that require voters to register a political affiliation, data indicates an increase in votes cast by Democrats, while Republican early voting numbers remain generally similar to 2022. Early voting is also up among voters with no party registration, though the data does not show which candidates they selected. As of Thursday, 44 percent of early ballots came from Democrats, 31.2 percent from Republicans and 24.7 percent from unaffiliated voters. Those figures cover only the roughly half of states that require voter affiliation. Three states, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, require voters to submit their race when they register. Data from those states shows increased voting by Hispanic and black communities, while voting among white voters is on par with 2022 early voting figures. McDonald said the pattern makes sense because communities of colour are more frequently part of the Democratic coalition, while white voters are more often part of the Republican coalition. Texas does not require voters to provide party affiliation or race, but the data still shows a surge in voting in some counties along the border with Mexico, which are more than 90 percent Hispanic. "When I look at those counties, what I see is some of them are going to beat their 2022 turnout in just the early vote alone," McDonald said. Early voting has expanded rapidly in recent years, driven by the Covid pandemic, when more states began offering early in-person and mail voting options. In the 2020 election, when voters chose both a president and lawmakers, more than two-thirds of all ballots were cast early, and half of those early votes were cast by mail. Voting patterns within the early period are also shifting. McDonald says voters increasingly prefer to vote in person, even when voting early, and are returning their ballots earlier than in previous elections. He believes this could reflect concerns about postal voting, noting that mail ballots are more likely to be disqualified due to errors and that some voters may worry about meddling in the US Postal Service, though he said there is no data to confirm what is causing the change. Some officials have already confirmed records being broken. On Thursday, the city of Minneapolis said it had set an early voting record for a non-presidential election. Early voting is expected to taper off soon, as states begin cutting off the option in the days before the election on Tuesday, 3 November.