Thirty-nine million ballots, and none of them counted yet

By Wednesday afternoon, more than 39 million Americans had already cast a ballot for the 3 November midterms, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab and the Associated Press¹. A day earlier the figure was 34 million². In 2022 nearly 46 million people voted early in total, and Michael McDonald, who runs the Election Lab, says this year is on pace to pass that and is “running at least even” with 2018, the highest-turnout midterm since 1914².

Texas shows the scale. About 5.6 million Texans had voted by Wednesday morning, against roughly 4.2 million at this point in 2022, numbers the Post calls comparable to a presidential year¹. Desk arithmetic: that is about a third more. Michigan had passed 1.3 million and Ohio nearly 1.2 million by Tuesday².

The partisan breakdown is where you should slow down. In the 27 states that record party registration, about 45% of the roughly 16 million early voters are registered Democrats, 31% Republicans and 24% neither². A Democratic data firm, TargetSmart, counts 3.8 million Hispanic early voters by Tuesday, against 2.35 million at the same point in 2022¹. Its chief executive, Tom Bonier, added the caveat himself: the data show who is voting, not how¹. Registered Democrats can vote Republican; habits also shift, and McDonald thinks some voters are simply turning back from mail to in-person voting after the pandemic years².

So read the early vote as a measure of participation, which is good news in itself, and not as a result. The results will come from the same dull machinery as always: county clerks, signature checks, scanners and canvass boards working to their state’s deadlines. Some states take days to finish counting mail ballots, so the first numbers on Tuesday night can lean one way and the final ones another. That is not a scandal. It is the order of work.

If you follow the night from Europe, the useful habit is the one Israel’s count taught this week: note the share of votes counted next to every number you see, and wait for the canvass before you decide what happened.