What Early Voting Trends Tell Us About the Big 3 Elections This Week

Democrats appear to have an edge in early voting going into Tuesday’s Big 3 elections: two governors’ races and the mayoral race in the nation’s largest city. 

Experts caution on reading too much into early voting numbers for the New York City mayor’s race and the Virginia governor’s race. However, the early voting numbers might be a strong predictor for the New Jersey governor’s race, which has emerged as the most competitive contest, one observer noted.

New Jersey

In what appears to be likely the most competitive race for Tuesday, Democrat U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill and Republican state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli are facing off in the New Jersey governor’s race, where Democrats seem to have an edge.  

As of Sunday, almost 1.2 million voted early. Most of those—615,325—voted in person, according to VoteHub. Another 582,996 voted by mail. 

While polls show the race is close, Democrats have a sizable early voting advantage of about 266,866, according to VoteHub. 

“Four years ago, the turnout for the governor’s race was 2.6 million. I don’t see a reason to believe it will be a huge change from that,” Micah Rasmussen, director of Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, told The Daily Signal. 

Sherrill leads in most polls, and the Real Clear Politics polling average shows she is up by 3.3 points. Still, surveys are not consistent. Three polls show she is leading by just a point, compared to others that show her leading by as many as 7 points. 

“Democrats are on track to go into Election Day with a 275,000 vote advantage,” Rasmussen said. “That means Republicans have to make up for that on Election Day. It’s possible. It could be done. But it’s a big hole to fill.”

Virginia

In Virginia, Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears faces former Democrat U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger. 

As of Oct. 30, the Virginia Public Access Project estimated that a majority of early ballots have come from likely Democrat voters. The numbers show an estimated 574,261 Democrats voted early in person, beating out an estimated 466,042 Republican early in-person voters. Democrats also have a more pronounced edge for mail-in voting, with 205,995 Democrats to 71,797 Republicans having returned mail-in ballots. This is the most recent party breakdown published by VPAP as of Nov. 3. 

“In Virginia, there is no registration by party. So, it can be difficult to know with certainty,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “The mail-in vote is high in the most ‘blue’ part of Virginia.”

For the last governor’s race, In 2021, 322,628 people voted by mail, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. In the 2024 presidential race, 489,782 voted by mail in Virginia. More than 1 million voted by mail in the 2020 presidential election during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As for early in-person voting in the 2021 governor’s race, 859,588 turned out early to vote in person.

It’s difficult to say what early voting trends say about the final outcome, Kondik said.

“It’s in flux what the patterns mean for Election Day,” he added. “Early voting in Virginia has only been widespread for about half a dozen years.”

One survey suggests Republicans aren’t shying away from early voting, though. 

A Christopher Newport University poll released Oct. 27 found that 29% of Virginians already voted. The poll found that 34% of Republicans surveyed said they had already voted compared to 30% of Democrats surveyed. Those numbers are of the Republicans and Democrats surveyed, and don’t mean more Republicans voted early. That same poll still shows Spanberger with a 7-point lead over Earle-Sears. 

New York City

Early voting opened on Oct. 25 in New York City, where Democrat mayoral nominee Zorhan Mamdani, a state assemblyman and self-described democratic socialist, leads by double digits in most polls. 

As of Nov. 2, the New York City Board of Elections reported that 735,317 people had cast early ballots. Early voting for 2025 is reportedly on track to be about five times higher than it was in the 2021 mayor’s race. 

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent after he lost a June Democrat primary to Mamdani, has closed the gap in recent weeks. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, is lagging far behind. 

The first weekend of early voting, starting Oct. 25, seemed a potential warning for the Mamdani campaign. That’s when  voters 50 and older accounted for about 60% of the voters during the opening weekend of early voting, the Gothamist first reported. 

That’s a major departure from the Democrat primary, where younger voters turned out heavily for Mamdani. Polls have shown the older voters back Cuomo. 

However, in this final weekend of campaigning, the trend has reversed. Early voters age 18-49 outnumbered older counterparts by 186,843 to 148,462, the New York Post reported Monday. This would likely favor Mamdani. 

A Manhattan Institute poll shows Mamdani with a 15-point lead. 

“In the primary, young voters turned out for Mamdani in historic numbers,” Liena Zagare, editor of The Bigger Apple newsletter with the Manhattan Institute think tank, told The Daily Signal. “In the first few days of early voting, it was definitely older voters turning out. Younger voters did surge a bit.” 

Turnout is high in Brooklyn, a borough that likely favors Mamdani, and comparatively lower in Staten Island and Queens, two boroughs more likely to prefer Cuomo, according to an ABC News report. 

Sliwa is polling at between 14% and 21% in recent polls. The question could be how much of that will go to Cuomo. 

“Republicans are increasingly encouraging people to vote for Cuomo to stop Mamdani, since there’s not really a visible path for Sliwa,” Zagare said. 

Yet Mamdani still leads in every poll. The question is whether he could break 50% in a three-way race.

“At this stage, the conversation is mostly about how broad a mandate Mamdani would get rather than will he win, though, as the saying goes, it’s not over until it’s over,” Zagare said.   

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