50 Million Ballots Already Cast as Democrats Ride Early-Vote Surge Into Midterms

About 50 million Americans have already voted, and the early turnout is beating the last midterm election in every major Senate battleground. In several states, registered Democrats made up a bigger slice of that early vote than they did in 2024 — a number Democrats are treating as a flashing green light. The party is chasing control of Congress, and the final polls before Election Day pointed its way.

The Supreme Court moved fast Monday night to swat down the Trump administration's attempt to meddle in California's count. In an unsigned order issued within hours, the justices declined a request to force the state to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots that the administration claimed — with thin evidence — had gone to noncitizens. It was a blunt rebuke for a president who has spent months casting doubt on how states run their elections.

A separate loss landed in federal court in Washington. Judge James E. Boasberg refused a request from Democratic lawmakers and party groups to bar the administration from pressuring states into screening incoming ballots, ruling that California, Nevada, Washington and Pennsylvania had already pushed back hard and that the suing groups hadn't shown real harm yet. His reasoning came with a caveat: if any state had caved, the case might look very different. Federal judges, he noted, have so far sided with the states.

The map has turned weird. Maine, Kansas, South Carolina and Texas — hardly Democratic country — are now the races expected to decide which party runs the Senate for the rest of Trump's term. In Texas, Democratic state legislator James Talarico told an Austin crowd that Republicans are 'terrified' of him beating Attorney General Ken Paxton, who fired back on social media with a warning not to wake up Wednesday with regrets. In South Carolina, Senator Darline Graham croaked through a brewery stop in Cayce with no voice left, while her Democratic challenger, Dr. Annie Andrews, credited her campaign diet of coffee, protein bars and truck-stop Diet Cokes.

Interviews with more than 28,000 voters by The New York Times and Siena University kept surfacing the same three notes: money stress, candidates mattering more than party, and Trump dragging on the ballot. Sunday night's Times/Siena polling had Democratic Senate candidates leading in nearly all seven major battlegrounds. Trump, who has told supporters to vote as if he were on the ticket, still talked like a man braced for a bad night. 'For some reason the sitting president doesn't win the midterms,' he said, 'but we gave this a very strong shot.'

He's also planning ahead. Trump told The New York Post he's ready to hand out pre-emptive pardons to allies — Elon Musk among them — and administration officials if Democrats take Congress and start investigating. Meanwhile, local law enforcement and election officials nationwide are bracing for threats or disruptions at polling sites as the president keeps pounding away at election integrity. After Tuesday, the counting starts, and so does the arguing.