Early voting in the 2022 election cycle is on track to shatter turnout records from prior midterm cycles, with over 36 million early votes cast by Friday afternoon, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida.
Expected to surpass the record-breaking 39 million early votes the U.S. Elections Project found cast in the 2018 midterm elections, analysts believe early voting turnout in the 2022 cycle will be the highest of any midterm cycle in recent history.
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“This will definitely be the top one,” Jeffrey Jones, senior editor at Gallup, told the Washington Examiner. “The trend is definitely up. If you look at midterms as its own trend, and presidential elections as its own trend, both are going in that direction. I think a lot of it just is a reflection of the changes in state law and voting.”
Gallup conducted a survey of voter interest in casting their vote early and found 41% of respondents planned to do so, marking the highest number in a midterm survey since its first in 2010.
Traditionally, voters cast their ballot in close proximity to Election Day, and millions of requested mail-in ballots have yet to be returned, indicating there are many more early votes left to come in 2022.
While expected to exceed prior midterm election cycles, the early voting turnout figures for 2022 are considerably short of the whopping 101.4 million early votes cast in the 2020 presidential cycle that the U.S. Elections Project recorded, which came during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After the 2020 election, myriad states revamped their early voting procedures, with some, such as Texas and Georgia, adding measures aimed at ensuring stronger election security.
“Even in some of these states where [they are] passing laws that are seen as being somewhat more restrictive on voting, at the same time, they’re kind of also expanding or really building opportunities as well,” Jones added. “So, this is kind of where things are going.”
The apparent 2022 surge does not appear to be divvied up evenly across states.
Georgians have been voting early at a record-breaking pace, having almost doubled the number of early votes on the first day of the 2022 cycle compared to 2018, per the secretary of state. By Thursday, 1.9 million Georgians voted early, eclipsing the 1.5 million who did so at this point in the 2018 election.
This does not appear to be an outlier for the Peach State. During the primary season, about 1.9 million voted in the gubernatorial primary, surpassing the roughly 1.2 million who cast their ballots in the 2018 cycle, FiveThirtyEight reported.
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To Georgia’s west, however, early voting does not appear to be on the rise in Texas. Some 2.7 million Texans cast ballots eight days into early voting, compared to 3.3 million who did so by that point in the 2018 cycle, according to the Texas Tribune.
Elsewhere, trends vary as well, with high levels of early voting in Florida and lower than previous levels in California, per ABC.
Overall, roughly 57.7 million mail-in ballots were requested, and just over 20 million have been returned, with the rest of the early votes cast stemming from the nearly 16 million who voted in person, according to the U.S. Elections Project.
By party, Democrats have the edge over Republicans, accounting for 43.8% of the early vote tracked, compared to 33.7% from Republicans and 22.5% from outside the duopoly.
Most of the discrepancy comes from mail-in voting. Republicans have a 40% to 34.2% edge over Democrats with in-person voting but trail Democrats 31.2% to 47.3% in the mail-in ballot count.
“It’s hard not to think it’s because of Donald Trump and the messages that he and other Republican leaders gave in 2020,” Jones explained, “saying you can’t trust mail voting. That it is going to lead to all this fraud and encouraging people to go and vote in person, so they make sure that their vote is cast correctly and nothing funny happens with it.”
In line with most elections, younger voters make up a smaller share of the vote. Zoomers accounted for about 4.4% of the early turnout, compared to millennials at 9.8%, those aged 41 to 65 at 40.8%, and voters over 65 at 44.9%.
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One consequence of the early voting surge is that on election night, there could be another red mirage akin to 2020, in which Republicans start off strong but Democrats begin to close in as early votes get tabulated, Jones noted.
“If people watch the results on election night, given that Republicans are more likely to vote in person on Election Day, we could see similar things [to 2020], where it looks like Republicans are leading, and then once absentee ballots are counted a day or two later that, you are definitely gonna see Democrats closing the gap,” he explained.
If the early voting data is an indication of a record-smashing turnout on Election Day, the 2022 election could be the third consecutive election with a mass turnout eclipsing recent highs.
The last cycle in 2020, fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and heavy enthusiasm, had the highest total turnout among eligible voters in over a century, the Washington Post reported. Meanwhile, 2018 had the strongest rate of voter turnout in at least four decades, depending on the measurement used.
