--- title: "Senate battlegrounds are voting early at 50–98% of their 2024 pace" canonical: "https://carmenaresearch.com/blog/battlegrounds-early-vote-50-98-percent-of-2024-pace/" author: "Research team" publisher: "Carmena’s Overton & Electoral Research" published: "2026-10-23" topic: "Early vote" license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)" --- # Senate battlegrounds are voting early at 50–98% of their 2024 pace None of the ten states is ahead of 2024, a presidential year. Against 2022, the last midterm, nine of the ten are ahead. Research team · Oct 23, 2026 **Key number: 50–98%** 2026 early ballots as a share of 2024’s at the same point, ten Senate battlegrounds (Alaska highest, Minnesota lowest) **Early voting in ten Senate battlegrounds: 50% to 98% of 2024’s pace** | State | Early ballots, % of 2024 at the same point | D−R of early voters (points) | Party source | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Alaska | 98% | R+8 | reg. | | Kansas | 88% | D+8.6 | reg. | | Texas | 78% | D+3.4 | primary | | Michigan | 69% | D+17 | model | | South Carolina | 68% | D+2 | model | | Ohio | 66% | D+5.9 | primary | | Iowa | 65% | D+18.9 | reg. | | Maine | 63% | D+32 | reg. | | New Hampshire | 51% | D+12 | reg. | | Minnesota | 50% | D+27 | model | Source: State early-vote data via UF Election Lab and NBC News, Oct 23, 2026, against NBC at the same point in 2024. Party mix: state registration files (reg.), party of last primary from state records (primary; Ohio as of Oct 22, Texas through Oct 21), or vendor estimate, TargetSmart via NBC (model). Caveat: 2024 was a presidential year, so every state is below its 2024 count. Party mix is not vote choice. Data (CSV, CC BY 4.0): https://carmenaresearch.com/data/public/chart-battleground-pace.csv As of Oct 23, 2026, 11 days before Election Day, every one of the ten Senate battlegrounds we track had cast fewer early ballots than at the same point in 2024, a presidential year. Alaska is closest, at 98% of its 2024 count. Minnesota is furthest behind, at 50%. Against 2022, the last midterm, nine of the ten are ahead. In full, against 2024: Alaska 98%, Kansas 88%, Texas 78%, Michigan 69%, South Carolina 68%, Ohio 66%, Iowa 65%, Maine 63%, New Hampshire 51%, Minnesota 50%. ## What it means This is a midterm voting early at a midterm scale. 2024 had far higher turnout than any midterm, so a state at 65% of its 2024 early vote is not necessarily slow. Against 2022 the picture reverses. South Carolina is at 239% of its 2022 count at this point, Minnesota 149%, Texas 137%, Ohio 117%, Maine 116%, Alaska 110%, Michigan 107% and Iowa 105%. Only New Hampshire is behind, at 90%. Kansas shows 210%, but its 2022 figure is a single snapshot we could not check against the state. Early voters lean Democratic in nine of the ten states, by the best source each state allows: Maine D+32.0, Minnesota D+27 (model), Iowa D+18.9, Michigan D+17 (model), New Hampshire D+12, Kansas D+8.6, Ohio D+5.9, Texas D+3.4 and South Carolina D+2 (model). Alaska’s early voters are R+8. ## What it doesn’t mean Pace is not turnout. Voters can move between early voting and Election Day without any change in how many vote. A state ahead of its 2022 pace may be seeing more early voting, more voting overall, or both. It does not say who is winning. A D+19 early electorate in Iowa is a registration count, not a vote margin. Registered party is not vote choice, and Democrats vote early more than Republicans. The three model-tagged states, Michigan, Minnesota and South Carolina, carry the most uncertainty about party. The party figures are not all from the same day. Iowa and Kansas come from state data of Oct 23; Maine from the state’s file of Oct 20, the latest posted. Ohio’s D+5.9 is from the state file of Oct 22 and Texas’s D+3.4 from state rosters through Oct 21; neither was refreshed on Oct 23. On Oct 23 the NBC News tracker, which models party in Texas, had Texas at R+1. Some states are small. New Hampshire has only about 19,000 early votes so far. ## How we checked For the 2026 counts we used UF Election Lab’s Oct 23 files, which mirror state data, for Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas, and the NBC News tracker for Alaska, Maine and New Hampshire. The 2022 and 2024 counts at the same point come from the NBC News tracker in each year. Minnesota’s official count, which had not updated since Oct 16 earlier in the week, appears in UF’s Oct 23 file at 419,189 ballots. Party comes from the best available source per state, tagged in the table: reg. for state registration (Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire), primary for party of last primary from state records (Ohio, Texas), and model for TargetSmart’s estimate via NBC (Michigan, Minnesota, South Carolina). Alaska and New Hampshire publish no official party split, so their figures are NBC’s, which carry state registration. ## Caveat Ohio and Texas party figures are from state files of Oct 22 and through Oct 21; Michigan, Minnesota and South Carolina party figures are TargetSmart’s model. ## Sources 2026 early-vote counts from state data via UF Election Lab and the NBC News tracker, Oct 23, 2026; 2022 and 2024 counts at the same point from the NBC News tracker; party mix from state registration, state primary records or the NBC News / TargetSmart model, as tagged. - [UF Election Lab, 2026 early-vote data](https://election.lab.ufl.edu/data-downloads/earlyvote/2026/) - [NBC News early-vote tracker, 2026](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-elections/early-vote) - [NBC News early-vote tracker, 2024 (archived copy)](https://web.archive.org/web/20241105060757/https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/early-vote) - [NBC News early-vote tracker, 2022 (archived copy)](https://web.archive.org/web/20221107172359/https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-elections/early-vote) - [Texas Secretary of State, Early Voting Roster](https://goelect.txelections.civixapps.com/ivis-evr-ui/evr) - [Ohio Secretary of State, absentee and early voting export](https://publicfiles.ohiosos.gov/free/absentee_public_export/Absentee_Request_Report.txt) - [Maine Secretary of State, voter data](https://www.maine.gov/sos/elections-voting/voter-data) ## Cite this Research team. “Senate battlegrounds are voting early at 50–98% of their 2024 pace.” Carmena’s Overton & Electoral Research, Oct 23, 2026. https://carmenaresearch.com/blog/battlegrounds-early-vote-50-98-percent-of-2024-pace/ Free to use with credit under CC BY 4.0. 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