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WASHINGTON, United States: A record 47.9 million Americans have already voted in next week’s US midterm elections, with participation surging in key battleground states and registered Democrats outpacing Republicans, figures showed on Friday.
The University of Florida’s Election Lab had recorded 47,922,669 early votes nationwide by midday, surpassing the previous midterm record of 45.9 million cast ahead of Election Day in 2022.
The surge is especially pronounced in states with fiercely contested Senate races that could determine control of the chamber during the final two years of President Donald Trump’s presidency.
In Texas, more than six million people had voted early by Wednesday, according to official figures, with in-person turnout running around 50 per cent ahead of the same stage in 2022.
North Carolina’s election board reported early voting up nearly 37 per cent on the same point four years ago, while South Carolina surpassed its entire 2022 early vote total on Monday, with five days of early voting still to go. In Kansas, where Republican Senator Roger Marshall faces a tough re-election fight, advance ballots were running around two-thirds ahead of 2022 last week, according to the secretary of state’s office.
In states that record voters’ party affiliation, registered Democrats have accounted for a substantially larger share of early ballots than Republicans.
Election Lab figures showed Democrats making up around 44 per cent of early voters in those states, compared with 31 per cent for Republicans and 25 per cent for unaffiliated or minor-party voters. In Georgia, where early in-person voting broke the state’s midterm record on Thursday, women accounted for 56 per cent of ballots cast by that day, compared with 44 per cent for men.
Meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV cast a ballot by mail in the US midterm elections, the Vatican press office said on Friday, a historic first for the American-born pontiff.
“In keeping with this long-standing practice of civic participation, he has submitted his mail-in ballot in Chicago,” the Vatican said. “The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes.”
The Vatican did not say which candidates Leo had voted for.
Leo, 71, was born in Chicago and is the first American-born pope. The pope voted by mail under his birth name, Robert Francis Prevost, according to the Will County Clerk’s website.
President Donald Trump’s sagging popularity is hurting his fellow Republicans’ chances of holding onto their majorities in both chambers of Congress in the November 3 election, with the public unhappy about the high cost of living and the Iran war.
Trump repeatedly criticised Leo early in the new pope’s tenure, calling him “weak” and “terrible” on crime.
The pope said in March that God rejects the prayers of those who start wars and have “hands full of blood.” In April, he termed Trump’s threat to destroy the Iranian civilization as unacceptable and previously declined to join the US president’s so-called “Board of Peace” initiative for Gaza.
