Record Early Voting in Texas and Georgia as Midterm Turnout Surges

Voters in Texas and Georgia are turning out in record numbers for early voting in the 2026 midterms, with both states reporting first-day and cumulative totals far above past election cycles.

In Texas, where early voting began Monday, Dallas County saw 76,069 voters on the first day, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, citing official data from the Dallas County Elections Department. That surpassed the county’s previous record of 60,573 voters set in 2020 and was well above the 59,388 who voted on the first day of the 2018 midterms. Registered voters in the county have grown 4.7% since 2020, from 1,398,469 to 1,463,708.

Harris County, home to Houston, broke its own first-day midterm record with more than 70,000 in-person voters processed by 3:30 p.m. Monday, surpassing the previous record of 63,188 set in 2018, the county elections department said on X. By the end of the day, the county had recorded more than 104,600 in-person voters, plus 24,794 mail ballots received as of Monday.

Records in red counties, too

The surge was not limited to Democratic strongholds. In El Paso County, more than 22,000 voters turned out on day one, the second-highest first-day total on record behind the 24,449 recorded in 2018.

Collin County reported more than 34,000 first-day voters, well above the roughly 19,000 who voted on the first day of early voting in 2022, according to Fox 4 KDFW, the local Fox affiliate. Denton County reported more than 34,000 first-day voters, surpassing its 2018 and 2022 totals, and Tarrant County also reported increased turnout compared with 2022.

The Texas numbers arrive as polls show a close race for the U.S. Senate. The Daily Caller reported that Democratic nominee James Talarico led by an average of 2.2 points in RealClearPolling as of Tuesday.

Georgia passes one million ballots

In Georgia, more than 1 million voters had cast midterm ballots one week into the state’s early voting period, which began Oct. 13, according to data from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. That is a 12% increase over the same point in the 2022 midterms.

“We continue to break records each day of early voting,” Raffensperger said in a statement.

The data showed 14.3% of the state’s active voters had turned out through in-person early voting or absentee ballots. Of the voters reported so far, 54.9% were female and 44.9% were male, and the largest turnout was among voters ages 65 to 69, with more than 140,000 ballots cast; voters ages 25 to 29 had cast just over 30,000.

Raffensperger called the record numbers “evidence that Georgians trust our election process.” The state will elect a new governor and vote in the Senate race between incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), which the Cook Political Report lists as “likely Democratic.”

Reporting based on coverage by the Washington Examiner and the Daily Caller.