As voters head to the polls on Tuesday, Republicans are trailing Democrats in early turnout in several key battleground states, but election experts warn the numbers alone cannot predict the outcome.
Decision Desk HQ analyst Geoffrey Skelley wrote on Sunday that while Democrats have outperformed 2024 early voting numbers so far, the numbers are still not decisive for either party.
“[A]“Support and early voting data are only one piece of the overall election puzzle,” Skelly wrote. “Millions of voters will cast their ballots on Election Day, and the votes will be counted the same no matter when they vote.”
More than 57.5 million votes have been cast early or by mail. Among states that report party registration, registered Democrats accounted for about 40% of early votes, compared with 33% for Republicans and 27% for independents or other voters, according to On Point Politics. Registration determines a voter’s party affiliation, not the candidate they support.
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Among the 25 states that release party identification for early voting in 2024, 38% are registered Democrats, 36% are registered Republicans, and 26% are independent or other. Compared to those numbers, this year’s breakdown shows Democrats’ registration advantage rising from 2 points to 7 points.
Early voting registration advantages have shifted toward Democrats in five key midterm election states, Skelly reported Sunday. Florida leans Democratic by 8 points (R+11 to R+3), North Carolina by about 13 points (R+1 to D+13), Maine by 10 points (D+14 to D+24), Iowa by about 13 points (R+0.2 to D+13), Iowa by 18 points (R18 to D+13), and Kansas by 17 points.
Skelly also noted that while the numbers may seem impressive on the surface, stronger Democratic showings in early voting could lead to more Republican voters turning out on Election Day.
In Iowa, history is on the Republican side at this point. In the 2014 Senate race, Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley led Joni Ernst by about 24,000 early votes, but Ernst dominated the Election Day vote, beating Braley by more than 118,000 votes by the end of the night. Iowa’s 2026 early voting statistics released show Democrats trailing their 2022 registration advantage by 7.1 percentage points (D+17.8 in 2022, D+10.7 in 2026). But that comparison alone doesn’t determine how much support a candidate will need from independents or Election Day voters.
“E-Day voters have been a more Republican-leaning group in the COVID-19 and post-pandemic era, but their degree of Republican leaning will become critical in 2026,” Skelly wrote. “Increased Democratic turnout may also cannibalize the votes that might have been cast on Election Day, limiting the party’s potential gains.”
States like Texas don’t register voters by party, and while many Democrats point to record-breaking midterm turnout in blue counties as a promising sign for James Talarico, it doesn’t mean he will defeat Republican candidate Ken Paxton. Texas midterm voter turnout also broke records in 2018 when Beto O’Rourke challenged Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, but O’Rourke still lost that year by more than 225,000 votes.
One race where early voting data is drawing attention is Kansas, where Democrats have significantly narrowed Republicans’ registration advantage among early voters. In 2024, Republicans accounted for 52% of early votes, while Democrats accounted for only 34%. Skelly said that as of Oct. 30, the registration lead had shrunk significantly, to about 43% for Republicans and 42% for Democrats. The outcome will depend in part on Republican turnout and how unaffiliated voters cast their ballots.
“Republicans need to catch up,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, warned that Democratic turnout would reach presidential year levels.
In an October Substack article, RealClearPolitics senior elections analyst Sean Trende argued that readers should not read too much into early voting data, especially this year. “The bigger problem is we don’t really know how these individual voters voted,” Trend said.
“Election results can be thought of as a formula. You multiply a party’s share of the early vote by the number of votes cast before Election Day, and then add that party’s share of the Election Day vote multiplied by the number of votes cast on Election Day,” Trend explained. “That gives you the total vote count for that party. So if you know those four quantities (number of early votes, number of Election Day votes, Party A’s share of early votes, Party A’s share of Election Day votes), you can figure out the outcome of the election.”
The problem, Trend believes, is that “early voting only gets us one or the other number.”
“What we really know is the number of early votes cast at a given point in time. We can now use demographic data and past precinct results to estimate voting patterns among individuals who have returned ballots or were identified as early voters, but these are only estimates. Worse, we know very little about the makeup of the Election Day electorate,” Trend wrote.
The main metric that most analysts, including Trend, were focusing on Tuesday night was the ratio of Election Day votes to early votes — a number that won’t be known until later Tuesday night.
In 2022, early voting will account for only 30% of the total in Iowa and 35% of the total in Maine, compared with 41% and 45% respectively in 2024. If Tuesday’s turnout pushes early turnout back to 2022 levels, Republicans may have more of a chance to make up lost ground as long as Election Day voters turn out and back the party strongly enough.