2026 North Carolina General Election
Who’s voting early in North Carolina
Early in-person and mail ballots accepted so far, by who cast them and where, against 2022 or 2018 at the same point before the election. Updated each morning from the NC State Board of Elections.
Loading the early vote…
Compare with
Who has voted
Party is how voters are registered, not how they voted. In 2022, registered Democrats cast 38% of the early and mail ballots and Republicans 31%, and Republican Ted Budd won the US Senate race by 3.2 points.
The pace
Mail ballots
Where
The races to watch
Every county
About the early vote
Early voting in North Carolina
- Early in-person voting for this election runs from Thursday, Oct 15, through Saturday, Oct 31, at sites each county board sets. Voters can register and vote at the same visit.
- Any registered voter can vote by mail without giving a reason. A mail ballot counts only if the county board receives it by the time polls close on election day; military and overseas voters have longer.
What’s counted here
- Ballots the county boards have accepted, early in person or by mail, including mail ballots that were fixed after a problem. Ballots still waiting on a fix, spoiled or cancelled aren’t counted.
- The State Board posts its file each morning with ballots returned through the day before, so these numbers are a day behind. A mail ballot counts on the day the county board received it.
- “Registered and voted the same day” counts voters who registered at an early voting site and voted there.
- Mail ballots sent, still out and spoiled are from the State Board’s daily county summary. A spoiled mail ballot is one whose voter voted early in person instead.
- Early ballots are counted on election night with the rest. Nothing here says how anyone voted.
Comparing with 2022 or 2018
- “At this point” means the same day of early voting. Early voting opened 19 days before the election in 2026 and 2022, and 20 days before in 2018. 2018 is compared by day of early voting, the first day against the first day, until the last Saturday, when both years’ early voting is done; from then on, the same days before election day.
- 2022 and 2018 were the last two midterm elections. Their counts are from the State Board’s final files, so a ballot rejected later isn’t in them.
- Share of registered voters uses the State Board’s count of registered voters for each election.
Party, age, race and ethnicity
- Party is how voters are registered, not how they voted. Unaffiliated voters, the largest group of registered voters in North Carolina, can vote for anyone.
- Age, race and ethnicity are from each voter’s registration record. Race and ethnicity are what the voter gave when registering; some leave them blank.
- Turnout within each party divides each party’s ballots by its registered voters: for 2026, active and inactive voters in the State Board’s statewide voter file as of Oct 11; for 2022 and 2018, the State Board’s count for each election.
- NC Senate and NC House districts compare with 2024, the last election on the same lines. 2024 was a presidential year, so only the party mix is compared, not the count. The US House districts were redrawn for 2026, so they have no comparison.
Source: NC State Board of Elections absentee data, counted by NC Mapped.