More than 34 million people in the United States had voted in person or by mail as of Tuesday afternoon, with one week left before the Nov. 3 midterm election, according to University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald as quoted in a States Newsroom DC Bureau report carried by Arizona Mirror¹.

McDonald, who runs the UF Election Lab early-vote tracker, said the pace is on track to exceed early voting in the 2022 midterms, when nearly 46 million Americans voted before Election Day¹.

A National News Desk report aired Monday on WWMT, citing the same tracker, put the national early-vote total above 30 million as of Monday afternoon, a lower snapshot than the Tuesday figure in the States Newsroom roundup².

The UF Election Lab page, when retrieved, still displayed a last-updated stamp of Oct. 25 and a national total below those later interview figures, so the journalists' citations of McDonald's comments are newer than the public page snapshot³.

McDonald told States Newsroom he was not sure whether early voting would beat 2018, but that current figures look at least even with that year¹.

"Right now, the data that I can see, it looks like we're running at least even to the 2018 election," McDonald said¹.

He told WWMT it was possible overall turnout could exceed 2018, which he described as the highest midterm turnout since 1914².

In states that record party affiliation, both accounts put Democrats at about 45% of early voters, Republicans near 30% to 31%, and unaffiliated or other-party voters about a quarter; States Newsroom specified 27 states and about 16 million voters in that subset^1,2.

McDonald told States Newsroom the data do not show why early voting is heavy and offered two possibilities: a post-COVID shift away from mail ballots, and concern among some voters about the Postal Service after President Donald Trump sought new mail-ballot limits, which a lower-court order blocked and the Supreme Court left in place in September¹.

WWMT reported that McDonald said people are returning mail ballots sooner in states that vote early only by mail, which he linked to possible concern about ballots arriving on time².

States Newsroom said Republicans are defending narrow majorities in both chambers and cited Cook Political Report ratings that list seven Senate races as toss-ups: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas, with state early-vote totals including more than 5 million in Texas, 1.3 million in Michigan and nearly 1.2 million in Ohio as of Tuesday¹.

Unknowns include whether the early-vote pace will hold through Nov. 3, how Election Day turnout will compare, and whether party-registration shares will match the counted result^1,2,3.