Follow-up: U.S. Midterm Election Day: Early Voting Tops 57.5 Million, a Midterm Record, as 435 House Seats and 35 Senate Seats Are Decided
WASHINGTON — Tuesday, November 3, 2026, is Election Day in the United States midterm elections, with all 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats and 36 governorships on the ballot. Polling places open during the morning local time, and the first polls close at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. To take both chambers, Democrats need a net gain of three House seats and four Senate seats; Republicans currently lead the Senate 53-47.
Early voting had already set a midterm record before Election Day. The University of Florida Election Lab counted 57,530,789 early votes as of 6:40 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, November 2, including 31,872,117 in-person early votes and 25,658,672 returned mail ballots. NBC News counted 57,243,189 as of 7 p.m. the same evening. The two trackers use different cut-off times and methods, so their totals differ, but both exceed the lab's 2022 midterm early-vote total of 45,920,446, by about 11.6 million. These are unofficial tracking figures that can change as states finish reporting; early-vote totals show how many people voted, not how they voted, and no early ballots are reported as results before polls close.
State figures also ran ahead of 2022. Texas recorded more than 7.7 million early ballots; Florida recorded 5,408,792, including 3,467,309 early in-person votes and 1,941,483 mail ballots; North Carolina recorded 2,816,820; Georgia recorded more than 2.8 million; and New York recorded 1,965,043 early in-person voters, up from 1,178,676 in 2022.
The counting timeline is the other story of election night. The Associated Press plans to cover nearly 7,000 races across all 50 states, and it says it declares a winner only when a trailing candidate has no plausible route to overtake the leader. California's large mail-ballot count and ranked-choice voting in Alaska and Maine may delay some final calls. Election Day decides the seats; the 120th Congress is due to begin in January 2027, with certification and transition still to follow.
(Sources: University of Florida Election Lab; NBC News)
Source: 佛罗里达大学选举实验室、全国广播公司
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国选民在纽约一处投票站外排队等候投票（资料图）。Eden, Janine and Jim 摄，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Voters line up outside a polling place in New York (file photo). By Eden, Janine and Jim, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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- 2026-11-03Follow-up: U.S. Midterm Election Day: Early Voting Tops 57.5 Million, a Midterm Record, as 435 House Seats and 35 Senate Seats Are DecidedThis story
