One in five of 2022’s voters have already voted

As of Oct 23, 2026, 11 days before Election Day, about 21.7 million Americans had cast an early ballot, by mail or in person. That equals 19.7% of everyone who voted in the 2022 midterm. At the same point in 2024, early ballots equalled 22.7% of that year’s final turnout. In raw numbers, 2026 is at 61% of 2024’s count for the same day.

The exact count was 21,654,855 ballots. Of those, about 12.2 million were returned by mail and about 9.5 million were cast in person.

What it means

A large share of the 2026 electorate has already voted. If total turnout this year matches 2022’s, roughly one ballot in five is already in. That makes the early vote a real part of the result, not a sample of it.

The comparison with 2024 is the fairest one available for the share of turnout. In 2024, 35.5 million early ballots had been cast at the same point, which was 22.7% of that year’s 156.8 million total. This year’s 19.7% is measured against 2022’s turnout of about 110 million, so the two shares answer the same question: how much of a typical electorate for that kind of year has already voted.

The two shares are close. A midterm electorate that is banking its votes at nearly the rate of a presidential one, relative to its own size, suggests early voting has become a settled habit rather than a 2020 exception.

What it doesn’t mean

It is not a turnout forecast. The share uses 2022’s turnout as a yardstick. If more people vote in 2026 than in 2022, the true share already cast is lower than 19.7%; if fewer vote, it is higher.

It does not mean one in five of the same people. The 21.7 million early voters this year are not all 2022 voters. Some voted in 2024 only and some have not voted in a general election in either year. The figure compares counts, not individuals.

The 61% figure is not a sign of low interest. 2024 was a presidential election, with about 47 million more voters than 2022. A midterm running at 61% of a presidential year’s raw count is consistent with a normal midterm turnout gap.

It says nothing about party on its own. Who these early voters are, and how far that tells you anything about the result, is a separate question with its own caveats.

How we checked

We took the national early ballot count from the NBC News early-vote tracker on Oct 23, 2026, which compiles state reports, and the same tracker’s 2024 count at the same point before Election Day. We divided each by total ballots cast in the comparison year: 109,979,856 in 2022 and 156,766,239 in 2024.

“11 days out” is Oct 23, 2026; the 2024 comparison point is Oct 25, 2024. Counts can lag states by a day or more, and some states report only some ballot types, so the national total is a floor rather than an exact figure.

State-level counts vary widely around the national pace. Our Senate battleground table shows each state against its own 2024 level, with the date of each state’s party figures marked.