Early voting data is an incredible source of information that few election analysts use correctly.
Due to changes in ballot access rules over time, changing correlates of how people of different parties may be voting since the last cycle, and the tendency for people to assume that party registration == partisan vote choice, the easy and popular modes of analysis (tallying up how many D and R votes have been cast) can be quite misleading.
So how might we track the early vote in 2026, the Strength In Numbers way?
The answer is to use individual-level voter file data and compare changes in behavior at the person level. If members of one party who voted early last cycle aren’t voting early now, that tends to be indicative of a turnout problem that persists through Election Day. We can do this using voter file data.
In 2024, I used this method to correctly track for my colleagues at ABC News that Democratic turnout was lagging early in key competitive states. And in 2025, I used the same approach to show Republican turnout had fallen off a cliff in the elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey. This ended up predicting the final change in party ID of VA and NJ voters in 2025 as compared to 2024 with impressive accuracy.
Instead of updating these numbers in isolated tweets and such, for the 2026 cycle, Strength In Numbers will now operate its first-ever early voting blog. This will contain regular updates to early voting data around the country using this same analysis technique explained above, relying on individual-level voter data from L2 to run the person-level behavior analysis.
So, what are we learning from early voting data?
2026 early voting updates (paid)
Below is a reverse-chronological feed of updates about early vote data in 2026. I can’t promise daily posts below, but they will be regular. If you want systematically updated descriptive statistics on voting (but not individual-level analysis), I recommend looking at University of Florida professor Michael McDonald’s website. Bookmark this page and come back to it!
October 12, 2026 — VA
The inaugural post in the early vote blog is a stage-setter using today’s update in Virginia. That’s partly because I live in Virginia, and partly because the Commonwealth has a fairly long and high-participation mail-in and early in-person voting period (in 2024, 52% of all Virginians voted early or absentee). In fact, today early voting in VA is just over halfway done, having begun on September 18, 2026.
So where does early voting stand in Virginia?
A quick note for free readers: The analysis below runs on individual-level voter file data from L2. That data isn’t cheap, and neither is the time it takes to analyze it and extract insights for this audience. Paid subscriptions pay for data and my time spent on this newsletter.
If you want these updates through Election Day — and more independent, data-first analysis like this in the future — please become a paying member of Strength In Numbers. If you sign up before Election Day, you can get 20% off an annual membership: