Tracking the early vote in Georgia

By Monday, Oct. 26, more than 51,000 people in Forsyth County had already voted — 29.4% of the county’s 174,135 registered voters — including 48,572 who cast ballots in person since polls opened Oct. 13.

Across all 159 counties, Georgia’s early vote crossed 2 million on Tuesday. The Secretary of State’s office recorded 2,000,452 in-person ballots by 4:30 p.m. and 2,016,077 by about 8 p.m.; add 97,382 absentee ballots accepted by mail, and the statewide early-vote total reached 2,113,459.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger credited county election officials as the state crossed the milestone: “We continue to break records each day of early voting. This is evidence that Georgians trust our election process. The strong turnout reflects the work our 159 county election officials do to make our elections free, fair, and fast.”

How that stacks up

Against 2022, the last midterm year, the comparison is one in-person total to another. At the same point in 2022, Georgia had recorded 1,640,652 in-person advance ballots; 2026’s 2,016,077 is about 23% above that.

Against 2024, a presidential year, the picture reverses. By 12:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 28, 2024, Georgia had already recorded 2,739,787 in-person advance ballots — meaning 2026, measured on the evening of Oct. 27, is running about 26% behind that higher-turnout election.

The first day of early voting set its own record: 190,394 in-person ballots on Oct. 13, 2026 — 41% above 2022’s first-day total of 134,962.

The county map

The statewide number flattens very different local pictures, and the biggest counts sit in metro Atlanta. As of Oct. 22, Fulton had more than 163,000 early ballots, DeKalb more than 113,000, Cobb more than 110,000, and Gwinnett more than 105,000. Cobb and Gwinnett were running about 15% ahead of their 2022 midterm pace, while DeKalb and Fulton posted more modest gains.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution county-by-county analysis grouped counties by how they voted in the 2024 presidential race — not by any current vote — and found the 27 counties Kamala Harris carried running about 9% ahead of their comparable 2022 pace, while the 132 counties Donald Trump carried were essentially flat.

Rural counties are part of that flat picture. Coffee, Colquitt, and Laurens counties were all running behind their own 2022 early-voting pace by double digits in the AJC analysis.

Rick Jackson, the 2026 Republican nominee for governor, has publicly warned that sluggish early voting in rural Republican-leaning counties could jeopardize his campaign and urged supporters not to become complacent. His concern rests on turnout pace in counties his party has won in the past — not on any public record of how those voters will mark a ballot in November.

What party-turnout numbers actually show

Georgia does not register voters by political party, so there is no official Democratic or Republican turnout count in the early vote. Analysts instead build modeled estimates from proxies — chiefly a voter’s choice of party ballot in their most recent primary, which is a public record — and the model does not reveal how a person actually voted.

Two estimates now circulating:

• ABC News modeling put Georgia’s early electorate around mid-October 2026 at about 18 percentage points more Democratic than at the same point in 2024.
• A CivicForge estimate put voters with a Democratic-primary history at 51% of Georgia’s early ballots through Oct. 21, up from 44% at the same point in 2022.

The core limit is simple: early-vote reports show who has voted, but no public record reveals how any individual marked their ballot. A Democratic-leaning county running hot does not by itself spell a win. The AJC, citing a Democratic data-and-analytics firm and the Georgia Votes tracking site, found early in-person voting among Black Georgians up 33% from 2022, turnout among voters under 30 up 54%, and Black voters about 34% of the early electorate versus 32% at the same point in 2022 — enthusiasm signals, not vote counts.

The Secretary of State publishes unofficial daily early-vote totals for the state and every county, split by method — in-person and absentee by mail — and labels them unofficial while figures are still arriving. The data includes demographic breakdowns by age, race or ethnicity, and gender, drawn from the voter file.

What you can do now

Georgia’s early-voting period runs Oct. 13 through Oct. 30, with dates, hours, and locations varying by county. During early voting, you may cast a ballot at any early-voting site in your county:

• Find early-voting locations and hours through the Secretary of State’s My Voter Page at mvp.sos.ga.gov.
• Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, with polls open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.; that day you must use your assigned polling place.
• The deadline to apply for an absentee ballot — Friday, Oct. 23 — has passed.

The tally will keep climbing through Oct. 30. It tells you who has shown up so far, not where Georgia is headed yet.