Nearly half of midterm votes cast before Election Day

Almost half of all voters in the 2022 midterm elections cast their ballots before Election Day either by mail or through early voting, with Asian and Hispanic voters leading the way, according to new data the Census Bureau released Tuesday.

The heavy use of both early voting and voting by mail occurred even as Republican-led states have tightened rules on both voting methods over the last two years, and it marked a steep rise from the two previous midterm elections in 2018 and 2014. Only the 2020 presidential election, during the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, had a greater share of US voters who cast ballots early or by mail — more than two-thirds of voters did so.

In the 2022 midterm elections, two-thirds of Asian voters and almost three-fifths of Hispanic voters cast ballots by mail or at early-voting sites, while less than half of white and Black voters did so, according to Census Bureau survey data.

Unusual dynamics drove midterm turnout last year including the Supreme Court decision earlier in the year allowing states to ban abortion and the repudiation of deniers of the 2020 election results in political swing states.

In fact, 52.2 percent of people eligible to vote in the United States cast their ballots, a midterm mark surpassed in the past 20 years only by the 2018 congressional elections which had 53.4 percent turnout. More than 69 percent of voting-age citizens were registered to vote, the highest rate for a midterm election in two decades, according to the survey.