Latino Voters Drive the Early Voting Surge: 5.2 Million Ballots Cast Early, and 15 Percent of Texas's Early Vote

Latino voters are turning out early in numbers well beyond the last midterm cycle. More than 5.2 million Hispanics had already voted early by Friday, an 80 percent increase compared with the 2022 elections, according to data released Friday by the organization Voto Latino and read this cycle — against 2.9 million Latino early ballots at the same point in 2022, in an analysis by the TargetSmart platform presented by the organization. Voto Latino president María Teresa Kumar said in a virtual conference that Latino voters are turning out because the stakes are personal rather than abstract, describing the turnout as the surge her organization had been predicting.

The Texas share stands out in the same analysis: in key Senate states including Texas, Latinos have cast 15 percent of the early votes, compared with 10 percent in both 2018 and 2022. The youth vote is part of the story — 400,000 Latino voters between 18 and 29 have already voted, up from 259,000 in the previous midterm cycle. Nationally, more than 41.3 million early votes had been cast four days before Election Day, up more than 25 percent from nearly 33 million at the same point in 2022, as voters decide control of the House and the Senate two years into President Donald Trump's second term.

On what is driving the turnout, the rising cost of living is the main concern of the Hispanic electorate in Voto Latino's survey of 7,000 respondents, with President Trump's immigration policy also named by a large proportion as a decisive issue: 39 percent of respondents demanded an investigation into abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 37 percent demanded a legal pathway to citizenship, and 36.1 percent called for an end to family detention. Early voting in Texas ended Friday, October 30; Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.