A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The latest data this morning shows almost 21 million people have cast their votes in the midterms.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Yeah. That's according to the University of Florida's Election Lab, which tracks those numbers. The early voting figure is a combination of voting by mail and in person.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR politics reporter Saige Miller is here. Saige, 21 million - seems like a lot of votes to cast so far. I mean, how does that compare to past years?
SAIGE MILLER, BYLINE: It is a lot of votes so far, and it's up about 2 million just since yesterday. And in key battleground states, early voting is up significantly compared to the last midterm election. In the 2022 midterms, nearly 122 million people voted. So 21 million now is a big slice of that.
And so I called up Michael McDonald. He's a political science professor at the University of Florida, and he also maintains the university's Election Lab data on early voting. And he says voter participation is looking pretty solid.
MICHAEL MCDONALD: When I look on a state-by-state basis, what I see is turnout is up over the 2022 and 2018 midterm elections. And keep in mind, 2018 was the highest turnout rate for a midterm election since 1914.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So you're saying turnout is up. But what can we glean so far from this election, from the early voting numbers we have?
MILLER: It's important not to overinterpret early voting data because it's often a poor predictor of final results. But McDonald says there are certain kinds of voters who are hitting the polls sooner than others. In states that have detailed data, Democrats are voting at higher rates than Republicans. That could be attributed to Democratic enthusiasm. And we've seen supercharged Democratic turnout in most of the elections since President Trump took office. But Democrats aren't the only voting group voting early. It's up among unaffiliated voters. And in states like North Carolina and Georgia, McDonald says voters of color are showing up in droves.
MCDONALD: African American turnout is up. Hispanics have more than doubled their performance at the same day in 2022.
MILLER: Even though Republicans aren't voting at the same rate as Democrats, it doesn't mean that they're sitting this one out, A. Democrats are generally more likely to vote early, and Republicans are more likely to vote on Election Day. That's what's happened in the last few elections, and there's no reason to think it will be any different this time.
MARTÍNEZ: What about in some of the competitive races? What can we tell about early voting in those races?
MILLER: OK. Let's look at Texas again, where there's a competitive Senate race in red Texas. McDonald says the numbers show people are activated.
MCDONALD: As of yesterday, there was over half a million more people who had voted than in 2022, a 50% increase of early voting.
MILLER: I do want to stress, even though we know people are motivated to vote, we don't know how they're voting. But Trump knows this is a tough environment for Republicans, so he's doing what he can to encourage they show up, like traveling all over the country to support Republicans on the ballot in an attempt to energize voters. We also don't know and have zero way to tell if turnout will be high on Election Day and if Republicans will make up for that early voting gap. We will all just have to wait until November 3 to solve that mystery.
MARTÍNEZ: All right, that's NPR politics reporter Saige Miller. Saige, thanks.
MILLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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