Early voting numbers for midterm elections are strong for Delaware, matching national trends that reflect a fight to control the US Senate.
Delaware has some strong top of the ticket contests in this year’s midterm– with incumbent Democrats facing Republican challengers in races for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and state Attorney General.
Delaware’s early voting numbers outpace 2022’s count with days left to go.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the number of early votes cast hit 87,427– an increase of more than 11 thousand from the day before. This surpasses the 2022 midterm, when about 55,640 people voted during the entire early voting window.
Experts note though that early voting turn out does not necessarily reflect higher participation overall– but changes in voter behavior.
Sussex County’s tally of 43,787 early voters so far makes up about half of the early ballots cast in the state. It tracks with historic trends of strong early voting numbers in the state’s southernmost county.
New Castle County – the state’s most populous county– has the second strongest participation with 38,796 early and absentee votes.
More than 22,800 people voted by absentee ballot in 2022. As of 3pm Wednesday, the state counted 17,319 absentee ballots for this midterm. It's is nearly 700 higher than Tuesday’s count.
Between absentee and early votes– approximately 12 percent of Delaware’s 809,886 registered voters have cast a ballot.
More than half of ballots cast so far in Delaware– about 55% –have been from registered Democrats.
As of Wednesday, the University of Florida Election Lab says 39,779,853 early votes are cast between mail-in ballots and in-person early voting. In 2022, it said in-person early voting and mail in ballots totaled 45,920,446.
Early voting is open through at 19 locations in Delaware from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM through Sunday, Nov. 1st.
