Election Day opens after record 52.7M early votes cast in 2026 midterms

Election Day for the 2026 U.S. midterms is underway, with Americans voting to decide control of Congress after more than 52 million of their fellow citizens already cast ballots before polls opened — a national midterm record that surpassed the previous high of 45.9 million set in 2022.

According to analysis by the University of Florida Election Lab, 53.14 million people had voted early as of 7 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, with the total comprising roughly 29 million ballots cast in person and 23 million submitted by mail, drawn from an electorate of approximately 210 million registered voters. Newsweek put the pre-Election Day total at 52.7 million. The races at stake will determine which party controls the Senate and House for the remainder of President Donald Trump's second term.

The surge is spread across multiple battleground states. In North Carolina, more than 2.8 million early ballots were cast — up roughly 31 percent from the comparable period in 2022, when about 2.15 million were recorded. Georgia surpassed its previous record for in-person midterm voting, exceeding 2.8 million early votes; in 2018, the state saw around 2.1 million. Michigan recorded approximately 409,000 more early votes than at the same stage in 2022, a 32 percent increase. Texas saw more than 7 million early ballots — over 1.5 million more than in 2022, according to the University of Florida analysis.

South Carolina recorded an 83 percent rise in early voting compared with the same period in 2022, according to an Associated Press analysis of polling data cited by India Today. The figure stands out because Trump carried the state by nearly 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election. Maine saw a 44 percent increase, with Republican Senator Susan Collins facing Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, a former president of the state Senate. Compared with the same point in the previous midterm, Kansas saw about 83,000 additional ballots submitted, a rise of 34 percent.

In states that report party registration breakdowns — only slightly more than half of all states do so — registered Democrats have outpaced Republicans among early voters. More than 11 million registered Democrats had voted early compared with approximately 8 million Republicans, according to India Today. Newsweek cautioned that the available data limits how far these figures can be treated as representative of nationwide trends.

Once you start seeing consistency across multiple days of voting and across multiple states, it starts giving us more confidence that whatever we're seeing in terms of relative engagement, that's likely going to carry through to election day.— Michael McDonald, University of Florida political science professor and director of the Election Lab

Experts are careful, however, not to read too much into the early numbers. The University of Florida Election Lab has warned that a higher early-vote count does not automatically translate into a larger overall turnout, since early voting may simply shift the timing of when people cast ballots rather than adding new voters to the total.

The greater interest in the election among Democrats (or voters who plan to vote for Democrats) and the resources campaigns have to turn out supporters.— Charles Stewart III, Director of MIT Election Data and Science Lab

It’s underappreciated that much of the money used in campaigns goes to the 'ground game,' and the campaigns have lots of money, and it can’t all go to advertising. Getting your supporters to vote early locks up those votes and means you have an easier time of doing the more difficult job of getting people to the polls on election day.— Charles Stewart III, Director of MIT Election Data and Science Lab

In any event, it’s probably all part of the same story, which is that this is likely to be a good Democratic year, and it’s starting a little earlier than it has in previous elections.— Charles Stewart III, Director of MIT Election Data and Science Lab

Stewart added that he did not believe early voting would itself affect the results, saying anyone who voted early would otherwise have voted on Election Day.

Mail-in voting has been a persistent flashpoint in this election cycle. Trump, who has himself voted by mail, has repeatedly questioned its security and made claims of widespread electoral fraud that have been debunked, according to India Today. A Trump executive order signed in March instructed the U.S. Postal Service to assume control over certain elements of the mail-in voting process, among them the design of new envelopes fitted with special barcodes; that order has since been subject to legal challenges. Trump has urged voters to cast ballots in person on Election Day.

Mail-in voting is a practice with roots stretching back decades in the United States, and it now accounts for roughly one in three ballots cast nationally, according to India Today. Early in-person voting has grown steadily more available, with the number of states offering it rising from 24 in 2000 to 47 in 2026, along with Washington, D.C. In eight states — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington — all elections are conducted by mail.

Some of the state-level increases in early voting reflect structural changes rather than pure enthusiasm. In Michigan, a 2022 state constitutional amendment introduced in-person early voting for the first time; earlier figures came only from returned mail ballots. Voting behavior also shifted after the COVID-19 pandemic made early and mail voting far more common in 2020, a pattern that has persisted even as pandemic-era concerns have faded.

By Monday, the window for most early in-person voting had closed, though mail ballots were still reaching elections offices. Some states allow those ballots to be counted for several days after polls close, meaning the full picture may not emerge immediately after Election Day.

Why it matters — Control of Congress — and the ability to check or advance Trump's second-term agenda — will be decided by today's results, making this midterm one of the most consequential in recent memory.

Reported by indiatoday.in, newsweek.com