With less than a week to go until the US midterm elections – which will determine which party controls Congress for the next two years – more than 43 million Americans have already voted.
Data from the University of Florida Election Lab indicates that four to five million early votes have been cast each day, a much higher rate than in most previous elections.
Texas has seen the highest above-average turnout rate so far, says Professor Mike McDonald, who runs the database. Hispanic communities are also seeing a much higher turnout than usual.
Overall turnout appears on track to outpace 2020, and even possibly 2018, which beat the 1914 record for overall turnout in a midterm election.
Texas has already surpassed its 2022 numbers by around 1.75 million voters, says McDonald. More than 5.8 million ballots have been cast in the Lone Star state, which has emerged as a key battleground that could decide which party controls the Senate for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Data from states where voters are required to register a political affiliation during the primary elections, when voters choose their party nominees ahead of the general election, indicates an increase in votes cast by Democrats.
The number of early ballots cast by Republican-affiliated voters remain generally similar to 2022.
Early voting is also up among voters who chose to not register with a specific party, McDonald says, however the data does not show which candidates they chose.
Figures on Thursday, external show that 44% of early ballots have been cast by Democrats, and 31.2% by Republicans. A further 24.7% were attributed to voters who had no party affiliation. However, that’s just for the roughly half of states that require voter affiliation.
Three states require voters to submit their race when they register – North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Data from these states shows an increase in votes cast by Hispanic and black communities, while voting among white people is on par with 2022 early voting figures.
“That makes sense because communities of colour are more frequently part of the Democratic coalition, and whites are more frequently part of the Republican coalition,” McDonald says.
