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Early voting is running well ahead of the 2022 pace in many of the states likely to decide control of the U.S. Senate. And a new poll found that voters in both major parties want the next Congress to spend its energy on prices, with President Donald Trump far down the list.
According to an Associated Press (AP) analysis of advance voting two weeks before Election Day, early voting in Texas is up 74 percent compared with the same point in 2022, and Kansas has more than doubled its total. Maine, North Carolina and Ohio have seen increases of more than 30 percent in early in-person and mail voting.
Democrats are chasing Republican-held Senate seats in all five of those states. Republicans, AP found, account for a smaller slice of advance voters in most of the states than they did four years ago.
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Nationally, more than 13 million mail-in and early in-person votes had been cast as of Tuesday, compared with 9 million at the same point in 2022. Part of the increase reflects states that expanded early voting or released more data since the last midterm.
What those voters want afterward is fairly clear. In a new AP-NORC poll, about 80 percent of respondents said lowering prices should rank among the next Congress' highest priorities, and roughly 7 in 10 want lawmakers focused on ending the war with Iran. Investigating the Trump administration drew about 4 in 10. Only about 2 in 10 put supporting the president's agenda near the top.
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Where the Early Vote Is Surging
Texas leads in raw numbers. Close to 1 million ballots were in two weeks before Election Day, November 3, up from about 550,000 at the same point in 2022, and early in-person voting there only opened Monday. The state doesn't break down its ballots by party.
State Representative James Talarico is trying to become the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas since 1994, facing Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Kansas, which Trump carried by 16 points in 2024, has logged more than 55,000 ballots against 27,000 at this stage four years ago. Republicans sent close to $12 million into the race earlier this month to prop up Kansas Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican, against Democrat Adam Hamilton, and Trump rallied there Monday.
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Ohio has cast 156,000 more ballots than at this point in 2022, a 30 percent jump, with total spending on its Senate race expected to approach $500 million, according to AdImpact. In Maine, where Maine Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, faces Democrat Troy Jackson, ballots cast are up 39 percent.
North Carolina offers one of the clearest partisan snapshots. Through the first five days of early voting, Democrats had cast nearly 45 percent of ballots, unaffiliated voters about 34 percent and Republicans nearly 21 percent, with Republican numbers slightly below 2022. Unaffiliated turnout rose 88 percent, from 133,683 ballots in the first five days of 2022 to 251,891 this year, according to Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer.
"Energy and enthusiasm is on the center-left," Bitzer told NC Newsline.
Not every competitive state is moving the same way. In Michigan and Georgia, where Democrats are defending Senate seats, early vote totals are high but similar to 2022, when both states set midterm turnout records. In Iowa, which has competitive races for governor, Senate and three of its four House seats, early voting is down about 6 percent from four years ago.
Costs and Iran Top Voters' List
Even among Republicans, backing the president ranks low. Only about 4 in 10 Republicans want Congress to prioritize supporting Trump's agenda, and for GOP voters, that goal trails lowering the cost of living, ending the Iran war and reducing the budget deficit.
A September survey from the centrist Democratic group Third Way, conducted with GBAO, reached similar conclusions. Asked whether Democrats should prioritize investigating and possibly impeaching Trump or focus on bringing down costs, respondents chose costs by a 41-point margin. Fifty-eight percent of Democrats rated their motivation to vote a 10 out of 10, compared with 45 percent of Republicans.
Ken Salazar, a Democrat who served as interior secretary under President Barack Obama and later as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said the economy is what he hears about on the campaign trail, from McAllen, Texas, to Colorado.
"Voters are very concerned about the economy, the pain that people are feeling with the high costs of living, gas prices, food prices, housing prices," he told Newsweek. "I think we're going to see a record turnout."
Republicans feel the squeeze, as well. Cost of living, gas and diesel prices, housing and healthcare are "all weighing on Republicans," Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist in Texas, told Newsweek.
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Enthusiasm Versus Election Day
Analysts in both parties warned against reading too much into any of this. Republicans tend to turn out heavier on Election Day itself, and an early Democratic edge can shrink fast once those ballots land.
ABC News put numbers on that split. Likely voters who plan to vote early or already have favored Democrats by 26 points in the ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, while those planning to vote in person on Election Day backed Republicans by 11 points.
Democratic strategist Doug Gordon sees the numbers lining up with polling, fundraising and Republicans moving "their time and resources to deep-red areas."
"There are lots of encouraging signs for Democrats in the early vote numbers," Gordon told Newsweek. "But Democrats can't get complacent. In past cycles, we've seen good early vote numbers for Democrats and Republicans have made up the difference on or near Election Day. No one should be fooled. These are going to be extremely close races that will go right down to the wire."
Aggregate turnout usually "really doesn't bear directly on the outcome," Texas Republican consultant Ross Hunt told The Texas Tribune, arguing that the race comes down to which side gets its base out. Paxton's real soft spot, he said, is Republican-leaning voters who skip primaries. Steinhauser reads the gap as an enthusiasm problem more than a wholesale shift.
"This doesn't necessarily mean that a bunch of Republicans have become Democrats in Texas," he said. "It's more that Republican voters might not be as enthusiastic to vote this year as they have been in the past."
Democratic primary turnout beating Republican turnout in March still worries him, he added, though he thinks his party can hold on.
Alex Patton, a Republican strategist, wants no part of the exercise.
"To me, this is noise," he told Newsweek. "I believe people read way too much into it, and the only thing we know is that voting trends changed measurably during COVID and in some cases are likely regressing to the mean. All campaigns should ignore reading anything into these numbers and work to turn out their voters all the way to Election Day."
Salazar described white voters who backed Trump in 2024 coming up to him at a recent event to say, "We're with you. We're with the Democrats. We got to stop this guy." The No Kings rallies around Colorado started small and grew into the thousands, he said, and remind him of "a kind of enthusiasm that I saw back when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008."
How This Compares With Past Midterms
Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority, and midterms typically favor the party out of power. Dissatisfaction with Trump's tariffs, the cost of living and gas and diesel prices, driven by the Iran war, have pushed Republicans to defend states they did not expect to.
Forecasters broadly expect that to cost the GOP the House, with the Senate a closer call. As of Wednesday, Decision Desk HQ's model gave Democrats a 78 percent chance of winning the House, with a projected 236 seats, and a 57 percent chance of taking the Senate, with 51 seats.
Democrats need a net gain of three seats to flip the House. When the Cook Political Report shifted 18 House races toward Democrats on October 9, its House editor, Erin Covey, wrote that Republicans would need to win roughly three-quarters of the toss-up races to keep control if the election were held then.
The Senate math is harder. Democrats must flip four seats outright, because Vice President JD Vance would break a 50-50 vote tie. In a forecasting issue of PS: Political Science & Politics published this month, all 12 predictions had Democrats winning the House, while most expected Republicans to narrowly hold the Senate.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn
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Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Dave Siminoff.
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