Sunday night, the national counter hit 28 million.
Exactly 28.00 million early votes, according to the University of Florida Election Lab update at 7:34 p.m. Eastern on October 25. Of that total, 14.34 million arrived by mail and 13.66 million in person. On Saturday night it was 27.15 million: in one day, nearly 850,000 more people joined the line — or the mailbox — with 8 days to go before November 3.
But the total, this time, is not the most interesting part. The interesting part is who is voting, and there Texas stole Sunday.
Texas: from 9 points to 0.6
Texas has already banked 4,251,983 early votes, according to data compiled by Theo Elections as of October 25. Almost all of them in person: 4,036,642, against 215,341 by mail. That is 22.3% of its 19,041,684 registered voters.
And here comes the number that changes the conversation. If those voters are sorted by recent primary history — not by party registration, which is not how Texas tracks it, but by which primary they voted in before — 33.3% voted only in Democratic primaries, 32.7% only in Republican primaries, 30.9% have no recent primary history and 3.1% voted in both. The gap between the first two groups: 0.6 points.
In the final 2022 early vote, that same measure showed 39.0% Republican and 30.0% Democratic. A nine-point lead. Today, 0.6. The fine print matters as much as the headline: primary history is not a vote. Nobody knows whom each of those people voted for — the contents of a ballot are not revealed until the count — and nearly a third of Texas’s early electorate has no recent primary history. What the number does say, plainly, is who is turning out early. And in Texas, this year, they are turning out neck and neck.
South Florida and two states closing this week
In South Florida, Sunday also left a sharp picture. Miami-Dade already totals 242,311 ballots: 118,717 in person and 123,594 by mail, 18.45% of its 1,313,264 registered voters. By registration, 95,597 Democrats, 84,634 Republicans and 62,080 in other categories. And combining Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe, the total passes 416,000 ballots, according to Sunday’s Local 10 News report. In Pompano Beach, the Souls to the Polls event mixed music with a simple message: voting is also a community act, not just paperwork.
Georgia, meanwhile, reached 1,751,149 accepted early ballots: 6.7% more than at the same point in 2022 and 21.3% of its 8,223,613 registered voters, according to the analysis of Georgia Secretary of State records released October 25. The projection for Sunday ran between 28,600 and 35,800 ballots, and the final week is the one that decides everything: in 2022, the last five days brought 839,641 ballots, a third of the early vote. Early voting in Georgia ends Friday, October 30.
North Carolina closed Sunday night with 1,510,848 voters, according to the Locke Vote Tracker. Its early voting ends Saturday, October 31. Florida, with its mandatory period of October 24–31 — some counties add Sunday, November 1 — also closes this week.
What these numbers do not say
It is worth saying out loud, because the same misunderstanding repeats every few years. An early-vote lead is not a lead in the result. In 2022, Democrats were also ahead in the early vote and Republicans ended up winning the House. States count differently, at different speeds, and many voters — especially those who distrust the mail — simply prefer to vote in person, whether early or on Election Day itself.
And Hispanic voters? We reported here yesterday that they have passed 100,000 early votes in the states that publish data by race and ethnicity — 101,218, to be exact — but that picture is still incomplete: several large states do not break out that figure, so the real total is higher and nobody can put an exact number on it today.
What you can do today, in order, without leaving it for the last day: first, check your registration and the status of your mail ballot at Vote.gov or on your Supervisor of Elections website; second, if you still have your mail ballot at home, do not drop it in the mailbox at the last minute — hand it in in person or at an official drop box, because it must arrive before polls close on November 3; third, if you plan to vote in person this week, check your county’s hours, which vary.
Eight days left. The early-vote map is no longer the 2022 map. The November 3 map — that one, nobody has written yet.
Official sources
- University of Florida Election Lab — early voting tracker summary, update of October 25, 2026, 7:34 p.m. ET (28.00 million; 14.34 million by mail; 13.66 million in person; party split in states with data): https://lperson.github.io/pages/EARLY_VOTE_DAILY.html
- Texas early vote data compiled by Theo Elections as of October 25, 2026 (4,251,983 votes; primary history; comparison with 2022): https://context-corner.com/analysis/4-25-million-texans-have-voted-early-one-number-makes-2026-look-very-different-from-2022/
- Miami-Dade County data as of October 25, 2026 and South Florida total (more than 416,000 ballots across Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe): https://duanews.net/2026/10/25/latest-figures-here-is-how-many-people-have-already-voted-in-miami/
- Analysis of Georgia Secretary of State records released October 25, 2026 (1,751,149 ballots; early voting through October 30): https://civicforge.solutions/articles/ga-early-voting-day-12-2026
- Locke Vote Tracker, North Carolina, through Sunday night, October 25, 2026 (1,510,848 voters; early voting through October 31): https://dailyhaymaker.com/six-more-days-tracking-the-early-voting-horse-race/
- Florida Division of Elections, Department of State — 2026 election dates (mandatory early voting period October 24–31; Election Day November 3): https://dos.fl.gov/elections/for-voters/election-dates/
- Vote.gov — voter registration check and voting options by state: https://vote.gov
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