A higher proportion of U.S. voters this year plans to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day or have already voted, compared to other recent midterm elections, according to a new Gallup poll.
The poll found 41 percent of registered voters say they’ve already voted or plan to during early voting periods — up from 34 percent who reported the same in the 2018 midterms.
In polling before the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, just 26 percent said they planned to vote early or had already voted.
This year’s poll, conducted Oct. 3-20, found that just 2 percent of respondents said they had already voted, and another 39 percent planned to cast their ballots before Election Day.
More than 27 million early votes have already been cast nationwide, according to the United States Elections Project, which has collected data from 44 reporting states and Washington, D.C.
Nearly 11 million people have voted in-person, and more than 16 million mail-in ballots have been returned.
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Though the share of voters who have already voted or plan to vote early is up from past midterm elections, it trails the most recent presidential election.
In the 2020 presidential election, after the COVID-19 pandemic had emerged in the U.S. but before vaccines against the virus were available, a Gallup poll before Election Day found 64 percent of U.S. registered voters planned to vote early. In the 2016 presidential election, that figure was 40 percent.
Conducted Oct. 3-20, the new Gallup poll surveyed 897 registered voters and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.