Nearly 21 million voters across the country already have cast ballots in the midterm elections, according to figures from the University of Florida's Election Lab released Friday morning. The lab monitors both mail-in and in-person voting nationwide.
Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT and founding director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, cautioned that the headline number does not automatically translate into a larger electorate. Many of the people voting early, he noted, would have gone to the polls on Election Day regardless.
Speaking to NPR's Morning Edition, Stewart attributed the elevated early voting totals to two forces: genuine voter interest and the substantial sums campaigns are directing toward getting supporters to the ballot box ahead of schedule.
"It also kind of reflects the large amount of money that's in this campaign that's going into retail politics, going door to door, and just making sure that supporters are energized," Stewart told Morning Edition.
The partisan makeup of early voting also appears to be shifting. Democrats continue to hold an edge in mail voting, but that advantage has shrunk compared with 2022 as more Democratic voters choose to cast ballots in person before Election Day. Republicans, meanwhile, hold a narrow lead in early in-person voting — a margin Stewart expects could tighten as well.
Two states in particular drew Stewart's attention: Maine and Iowa. Neither has ranked among the major battlegrounds in recent elections, yet both are showing notable early voting activity. In Stewart's assessment, the numbers point to energized voters and organized get-out-the-vote operations in places that have not recently been the focus of intense political spending.
During his conversation with A Martinez, Stewart also examined whether worries about the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and President Trump's opposition to mail voting are altering how Americans cast their ballots. He further addressed the continued value of polls, arguing that they retain relevance even though they cannot forecast precisely what will happen on Election Day.
For local voters, the takeaway is that early turnout figures are a measure of when ballots are cast, not how many people will ultimately participate. Election officials and campaigns will be watching the coming days to see whether the surge continues through the weekend and into the final stretch before Election Day.
