Millions Already Voted as Final Midterm Week Begins

Millions Already Voted in the 2026 midterm elections, and the final week of campaigning is now a race to reach the voters who have not yet cast a ballot. Nearly thirty-three million Americans had voted early by Tuesday, according to NBC Palm Springs, with early voting underway in more than forty states and Election Day set for Tuesday, November third. The contest will decide control of Congress, dozens of governorships and thousands of state and local offices, and the closing days will be fought over a shrinking pool of undecided voters.

The sheer scale of early voting is the first thing to understand. In Texas, where in-person early voting runs through Friday, October thirtieth, the state's most populous county set a first-day midterm turnout record, processing more than seventy thousand voters and topping a mark set eight years earlier. In North Carolina, in-person early voting ends Saturday, October thirty-first. In Georgia, early voting opened in mid-October for a midterm that will elect a new governor and could help decide which party controls the Senate. The calendar varies by state, which is why election officials urge every voter to confirm their own local deadlines rather than assume a neighbor's rules apply.

The races drawing the national spotlight

Several Senate contests are dominating the final stretch. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico faces Republican Ken Paxton in a race that has drawn repeated visits from President Donald Trump, who has campaigned for Paxton in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in decades. In Kansas, a state long considered a Republican stronghold, Senator Roger Marshall faces Democrat Adam Hamilton in a contest that has become unexpectedly competitive, according to NBC Palm Springs. In Maine, Senator Susan Collins faces Troy Jackson, and in Michigan, Mike Rogers faces Abdul El-Sayed, two more races that forecasters list as genuinely contested.

Georgia carries two marquee races at once. Senator Jon Ossoff is seeking reelection against Republican Representative Mike Collins, while the open governor's race pits Republican Rick Jackson against Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms. In Ohio, the governor's race between Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton has drawn national attention for an advertisement featuring Acton's estranged mother, a spot Ramaswamy has defended and Acton has condemned. The personal turn in that race has become a symbol of how heated the closing days have grown.

Record spending, clashing forecasts

Money is pouring into the final week at a historic pace. AdImpact projects that campaigns will spend roughly eight hundred fifty million dollars in Texas alone, according to NBC Palm Springs, while total nationwide spending is estimated to exceed eleven billion dollars. That flood of advertising is one reason voters in battleground states are seeing campaign messages on nearly every screen, and it is also why the last days of a campaign can still move numbers even after so many ballots are already cast.

The forecasts, meanwhile, disagree about how far the shift will go. One forecaster's model updated October twenty-fifth gave Democrats a seventy-nine percent chance of winning the House and a fifty-six percent chance in the Senate, according to a race-tracking summary, while another prominent model put the House odds far higher. Sabato's Crystal Ball moved twenty-eight House races toward Democrats on October twentieth, pushing the seats at least leaning Democratic past the two hundred eighteen needed for a majority. The disagreement is itself the point: a forecast is a probability, not a result, and no race has been called yet.

Early vote totals deserve the same caution. The ballots counted so far show who turned out, not how they voted, and early voters tend to skew older and less Republican than the full electorate, according to the same race-tracking summary. Anyone claiming to read the outcome from early turnout alone is guessing, and the campaigns know it, which is why both parties are still spending heavily on turnout operations aimed at Election Day voters.

What young voters should do this week

For younger voters, the practical stakes are unusually direct. All four hundred thirty-five House seats are on the ballot, and the party that wins the chamber will shape everything from the cost of living to climate policy to the rules governing social media, a subject GenZ NewZ has covered in how online platforms are shaping young voters. Students who cannot yet vote have still found ways into the process, as shown by the Iowa mock election that drew thousands of underage ballots, and the midterms are even shaping debates far from domestic policy, as covered in the war timeline tied to the election calendar.

The checklist for the final week is short. Confirm your polling place or early voting site, check the deadline for your state, and bring the identification your state requires. Voters in Texas have until Friday to vote early, North Carolinians until Saturday, and everyone else should check their state election office for exact hours. Lines are often shorter during weekday early voting than on Election Day itself, and a plan made now beats a scramble on Tuesday.

Millions Already Voted, but millions more have not, and the campaigns will spend the next six days trying to reach them. The polls, the spending and the early turnout all point to a close finish, and the only numbers that will settle it are the ones counted after the last ballot is cast on November third.