Georgia and Texas Closed Early Voting Friday With More Than 7 Million Ballots Between Them
Georgia neared a record 2.3 million early ballots by Thursday night and Texas passed 5 million by Wednesday, according to the Election Lab — two battlegrounds whose Senate races drew the parties' biggest names in the final days.
Early voting closed Friday in the two Southern battlegrounds that have defined the midterm turnout story. Georgia and Texas had already combined for more than 7 million ballots before Friday's final day, according to the Action Network's closing data report, read in full this cycle. Georgia's early period, which began October 13, closed as the busiest midterm stretch the state has seen: close to 2.3 million Georgians had cast an early ballot by the end of Thursday, according to the Secretary of State's office as reported there — already above Georgia's full early-voting count from the 2022 midterms.
Texas crossed 5 million early votes by Wednesday, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab as cited in the report — more than a fifth of the state's registered voters, in a state Democrats have not carried in a Senate race since 1988. The Texas race between Democratic state Rep. James Talarico and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton drew a closing push from both parties, the report noted: President Trump rallied in Texas twice this week, and Vice President JD Vance campaigned for Paxton in Weatherford. In Georgia, the Senate contest between Sen. Jon Ossoff and Rep. Mike Collins and the governor's race between Keisha Lance Bottoms and Rick Jackson drew former Vice President Kamala Harris to Atlanta on Thursday and Friday and former President Barack Obama on Wednesday, the report said.
Who cast those ballots is a model, not a count — and the report says so. Texas and Georgia do not register voters by party, so ABC News built its estimate from voting history: it found 51 percent of the Texas early vote leaning Democratic and 45 percent Republican, a 14-point shift from 2022 at the same stage, and among voters who sat out the last four federal elections, 64 percent leaning Democratic to 21 percent Republican. Al Jazeera's reporting from Texas, cited in the same report, found the gap Republicans are watching: 21 percent of registered voters in rural counties had voted early, compared with 24 percent in the bigger metro areas — and Republicans count on rural turnout to offset Democratic strength in the cities. None of it predicts a winner. Both races stay open until polls close on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3.
