Virginia has closed its early-voting window with 1,632,427 ballots already cast for the November 3 midterm elections — a final total reported on Monday, November 2, that is roughly two-thirds higher than the state's entire early vote in the last midterm cycle. The count, compiled from state election-office data, was confirmed in regional reporting on Monday that put Virginia's early turnout at more than 1.6 million, against just under one million early ballots in the 2022 midterms.
Source: On Point Politics Virginia early-vote tracker (state election-office data via civicAPI), Nov 2, 2026
The split shows how Virginians chose to vote early. Of the 1,632,427 ballots, 1,312,654 were cast in person at registrar offices and satellite early-voting sites, and 319,773 were mail ballots returned in time to be counted in the tracker. Voters had requested 450,603 mail ballots in total, which means a substantial share of requested mail ballots had still not been returned when the early window closed — those ballots can still arrive under Virginia's mail rules, but the in-person early vote is now finished.
Source: On Point Politics Virginia early-vote tracker, Nov 2, 2026
The comparison with 2022 is the story. An October 25 analysis citing Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) figures put the state's complete 2022 midterm early vote at about 977,000 ballots — a mark the 2026 electorate passed with days of early voting still to run, before finishing near 1.63 million. Regional reporting on Monday described the 2022 figure the same way: just under one million. In other words, roughly 650,000 more Virginians voted before Election Day this cycle than in the whole of the last midterm early-voting period.
Source: 96.9 WXBQ, Nov 2, 2026; Blue Virginia analysis of VPAP data, Oct 25, 2026
How the early window worked
Virginia runs one of the longest early-voting seasons in the country. In-person early voting opened on September 18 and ran through 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 31, at general registrar offices and satellite locations, with no excuse required — any registered voter could walk in and cast a ballot. The deadline to register and cast a regular ballot was October 23; after that date, Virginians could still register in person and vote a provisional ballot through Election Day under the state's same-day registration rules.
Governor Abigail Spanberger drew attention to the surge while it was still building. Earlier in October she called the turnout “extraordinary” relative to 2022 and noted that, in percentage terms, the strongest gains were coming from rural, agricultural and historically Republican areas of the state — a reminder that a bigger early vote is not automatically one party's early vote.
Source: Governor Spanberger's October statement, summarised in early-vote trend reporting
Virginia does not publish the party affiliation of its early voters, and ballots are not counted before Election Day. The 1.63 million figure measures participation, not preference: it cannot say who is winning the Senate race, the House races or the three proposed constitutional amendments also on Tuesday's ballot. What it does establish is engagement — hundreds of thousands more Virginians decided this election mattered enough to vote before the final day.
The geography matters for the state's large South Asian and Punjabi communities. Northern Virginia — Fairfax County, Loudoun County and Prince William County among them — is home to one of the largest Punjabi and wider South Asian populations on the U.S. East Coast, and Fairfax recorded the largest number of early ballots of any Virginia locality in the county-level tracker during the final week. Those same Northern Virginia counties also sit inside the congressional districts that will help decide control of the U.S. House, which is why both parties spent the autumn courting suburban voters there.
Source: County-level early-vote tracker reporting, late October 2026
The national picture Virginia is part of
Virginia's surge mirrors the country. Nationally, more than 50 million Americans had already voted by the weekend — passing the entire early-vote total of the 2022 midterms, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab — with Texas alone recording more than seven million early ballots. Election researchers caution, in Virginia as elsewhere, that a record early vote can partly mean Election Day voters simply voting sooner rather than new voters joining the electorate; the final turnout figure on Tuesday night will settle that question.
Source: University of Florida Election Lab figures reported Nov 1–2, 2026
What happens next
Polls across Virginia open at 6 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3; anyone in line at 7 p.m. can still vote. Voters who have not yet cast a ballot can check their registration and polling place at Elections.Virginia.gov. Because such a large share of the total vote is already in, the first reported batches on election night will carry unusual weight — but with same-day-registration provisional ballots reviewed by local boards in the following days, an extremely close race may not be final on the night.