Early Midterm Voting Sets Record With 47.9 Million Ballots

The University of Florida’s Election Lab counted 47,922,669 early votes nationwide by midday Friday, October 30, setting a record for a U.S. midterm election and surpassing the 45.9 million cast before Election Day in 2022. Early voting has also exceeded the comparable point in 2022 across several states with competitive Senate races. An Associated Press analysis of data covering 47 states and Washington, D.C., found more than 43 million ballots cast five days before Election Day, nearly 10 million more than at the same point in the previous midterm. That tally has different coverage and a different snapshot from the Election Lab’s nationwide count. Texas recorded more than 6.3 million early votes by Wednesday, compared with 4.2 million at the same point in 2022, a 50% increase. North Carolina’s early voting was up nearly 37% from the corresponding stage four years ago, while South Carolina had surpassed its entire 2022 early-vote total by Monday, with five days of early voting still remaining. In Kansas, advance ballots were running about two-thirds ahead of 2022 last week, according to the secretary of state’s office. The data also showed increases in Maine and Michigan,...