Texas Early Voting Breaks the Midterm Record: Nearly 7.5 Million Ballots Cast Before Election Day

The early vote in Texas is closed, and it is the biggest midterm early vote the state has ever recorded. Nearly 7.5 million Texans cast ballots during the 12-day early voting period, according to state figures released Saturday and reported by The Wall Street Journal — just over 39 percent of the state's registered voters. The total broke the previous record for ballots cast early in a midterm election and nearly matched the early turnout rate of 2018, which was just shy of 40 percent, even though Texas has a bigger population and more registered voters now than it did then.

The Secretary of State's turnout file, compiled county by county, counted 7,410,631 ballots returned through Friday, October 30 — 7,152,282 cast in person and 258,349 returned by mail. Harris County led the state with 957,110 ballots, followed by Dallas County with 563,076, and all 254 counties had reported. Published totals differ somewhat by source and method — one widely cited tracker put the early count near 6.8 million using a different methodology — and county reports can still be revised, but every count agrees on the headline: the old midterm record, 5.5 million early ballots in 2018, has been passed by a wide margin.

What remains is Election Day itself, on Tuesday, November 3, and in Texas that is historically the smaller share. Early voting typically accounts for the vast majority of Texas ballots, the Journal noted, with just 15 to 26 percent of votes cast on Election Day in recent cycles. Mail ballots postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day and received by the following day also still count under Texas rules.

Turnout is not a result, and this story makes no claim about who benefits from it — Texas does not register voters by party, so the early file carries no party split. What the numbers say on their own is simpler: more Texans voted before Election Day in this midterm than in any before it.