Early Vote Tracker 2026
A running tally of ballots already returned for the November 3, 2026 midterm, split by the party each voter is registered with. These are counts of who has voted, not how they voted. Updated daily from state election office files.
Today's brief
Overall: every state, every ballot
The big number everyone quotes. This counts all ballots returned in all reporting states, and the party split blends hard counts with Election Data Guy's model for states that have no party registration. It matches what his site and most trackers show.
Hard counts: party-registration states
The headline numbers. Only states that register voters by party are counted here, so every figure is a state record, not an estimate. Shares are of ballots with a party attached.
Trend: who is gaining ground
One point per day, showing whether the Democratic lead in returned ballots is growing or shrinking. The total leads; use the buttons to switch the chart to hard counts only or modeled states only.
Firewall is Democrat ballots minus Republican ballots, the raw lead Democrats bank before Election Day. Republicans gain ground when the firewall shrinks or the Democratic margin in points falls. Each day counts whichever states are reporting, so new states joining can move the numbers too.
State by state: hard counts
How this is counted. These states register voters by party, so when a ballot comes back the state records which party that voter is registered with. The Republican, Democrat and Other columns are those registrations added up from each state's returned-ballot file. Nothing is estimated. The headline tiles at the top, the trend table and the 2022 comparison use only these rows. Returned is every ballot back, including voters with no party; Rep % and Dem % are shares of ballots with a party attached.
Margin is Republican share minus Democrat share, in points. The small line under each figure is the change since the previous pull.
State by state: modeled estimates
How this is estimated. These states do not ask for a party when you register, so the ballot file says who voted but not what party they belong to. The tracker that compiles these files assigns each voter a likely party using a statistical model built on things like which primaries the voter has taken part in and how their precinct votes. The Republican and Democrat columns here are model estimates, not state records. They are shown so the map is complete, but they are left out of the headline tiles, the trend and the 2022 comparison, and they should not be quoted as a count.
Same columns as the hard-count table. Firewall and margin here are modeled too.
In person or mail only
Which states have opened in-person early voting and which are still mail only. This matters because in-person early voters have leaned Republican in recent cycles while mail voters have leaned Democratic, so the split tends to tighten once polling places open.
Scheduled start is the first day of statewide in-person early voting for the November 3 general, from Ballotpedia. Some states let voters cast an absentee ballot in person at the clerk's office before the formal early-voting window opens, which is why in-person ballots can show up ahead of the scheduled date. First seen is the first pull in which the state reported any in-person ballots. Where in-person voting has started but the state file does not yet separate those ballots, the row says so; they are most likely being counted with mail.
Against 2022
How this year's hard-count split compares with where the 2022 midterm early vote finished.
The 2022 rows are final pre-election totals from the US Elections Project. Today's ballots are almost all mail, so the 2022 mail-only row is the closest like-for-like. In 2022 the in-person early vote ran Republican and pulled the final split toward the GOP, so expect the 2026 gap to narrow as in-person voting opens. A same-date 2022 snapshot is not published, so this compares an early read against a finished one.
Voter registration by party
A different question from the ballots above: not who has voted, but who is registered. Figures come from each state's election office, one row per published report. Edge is Republicans minus Democrats. The change columns show which way the edge moved: R means Republicans gained on Democrats, D means Democrats gained. Most states publish monthly, so this section moves when a state posts a new report, not daily. An asterisk marks a state whose figures come from a news report citing the state, not from the state's own file.
Active and total rolls are not comparable across states, and list maintenance can move a state's numbers without any voter changing parties. Compare a state against its own earlier reports.
Registration edge over time
Monthly history by state
Totals only
States reporting how many ballots are back but not yet which party they came from.
Cross-check
An independent academic tally of the same party-registration states, used to confirm the numbers above are in the right range.
Sources: state-by-state ballot returns compiled from state election office files by a public early vote tracker; the University of Florida Election Lab 2026 early vote tracker for the national cross-check. 2022 figures: US Elections Project 2022 general election early vote statistics.