Early voting opened in North Carolina last week. Here is what happened on day one.
Thirty-two percent of registered Republicans turned out relative to the first day of early voting in 2024.
Seventy-three percent of registered Democrats did.
Sixty-four percent of unaffiliated voters did.
That is not a polling average or a model or a projection. That is a count of human beings who walked into a building and voted.
Iowa tells the same story.
Through the first two days of early voting, Democratic turnout ran at 85 percent of 2024 levels.
Republican turnout ran at 52 percent.
Iowa has three Magnificent 11 races on the ballot at once. The Senate seat, the first district, the third district. All toss-ups. All being decided right now by people who either show up or do not.
And nationally.
As of this week, roughly 6.2 million early votes have been cast, including 1.4 million in person.
In the states that record party registration, the breakdown is 51.1 percent Democratic, 28.7 percent Republican, 20.2 percent other.
Total early turnout is up 24 percent compared to the same point in 2022. And across fourteen states with partisan data, the early electorate is running more Democratic than it did in 2022, by somewhere between 22 and 29 points.
Georgia set a midterm record on its first day with more than 188,000 ballots, roughly 50,000 more than day one in 2022.
Now the honest caveat, because our readers deserve one.
Early vote composition is not an election result.
Republicans have traditionally voted on Election Day in larger numbers, and a party can trail badly in early voting and still win. That happened in 2022 and nobody should forget it. Banking votes early does not create votes, it relocates them.
So no, this does not mean the election is lost.
What it means is narrower and more useful. The most reliable comparison is same-party turnout against the same party's own prior performance, and on that measure Republicans are running at roughly half the pace of Democrats in two early states.
That is a motivation gap, and it is showing up in exactly the places where our races are closest.
Which is the argument we have been making since August.
Republicans have held the money advantage all cycle. More than $740 million since Labor Day. A record $272.9 million quarter for the Senate Leadership Fund. Total political advertising headed for $11.6 billion, the most expensive cycle in American history.
And CNBC's assessment of what that produced in the Senate battlegrounds was blunt. Little movement.
Eleven billion dollars does not appear in these turnout numbers anywhere.
You cannot purchase a motivated voter in the final two weeks. You can only organize one, and that work is done by people, not by media buys.
Texas started voting this morning.
Early voting opened across Texas today and runs through October 30.
Governor Abbott told ABC13 that Republican turnout looked enormous in Harris County on the first morning. We hope he is right, and we will know shortly, because unlike polling, this gets counted.
One practical note for Texas readers. Harris County has 193 fewer Election Day polling sites this cycle than it had in 2022. If you were planning to vote on November 3, confirm your location now rather than discovering a change on the day.
What actually closes a gap like this.
Not an advertisement. A person.
If you have a mail ballot, fill it out today and return it. Follow the signature and identification instructions exactly, because most rejected ballots are rejected over envelope defects rather than anything substantive, and curing a defect requires you to notice before a deadline you probably do not know.
If your state has early in-person voting open, go this week rather than next. Lines grow, weather happens, work schedules change.
Then take three conservatives who vote irregularly and make them your personal project between now and November 3. Not persuasion. Logistics. Do they know the dates. Do they know their location. Do they need a ride.
Trafalgar has Texas at 46.4 to 45.2 and Iowa at 44.0 to 42.1, with the Libertarian candidate polling larger than the margin in both races. Those elections will be decided by a few thousand people who either returned a ballot or did not.
Fourteen days.
Thirty-two percent in North Carolina. Fifty-two percent in Iowa.
Those numbers are not a verdict. They are a measurement taken with two weeks left on the clock, which means they are still entirely changeable.
The other side is showing up. That is the whole report.
Go vote, and take three people with you.
