Bernard Reynolds · October 31, 2026
Early voting is over in Georgia, and the state counted about 297,000 more ballots between yesterday morning and this morning. That brings the total to about 2.82 million.
As of 8:34 a.m. ET on Oct 31, the Secretary of State's count shows about 2.82 million accepted early ballots. That is a bit more than one voter in three out of about 7.5 million active voters. Every one of Georgia's 159 counties added ballots since yesterday, including the smallest, Taliaferro. I'd guess a good share of that jump is the last day of early voting getting counted, but the count doesn't say so, and I'd rather not pretend it does.
About 166,000 mail ballots were requested. About 119,000 have come back, and nearly all of those are accepted. That leaves about 47,000 requested ballots still out. If one of them is yours, the mail deadline is not a place to gamble. Check with your county elections office about how to get it counted, or plan to vote in person on Tuesday.
GeorgiaVotes counts both years the same way. It has 2026 at about 2.82 million early votes against about 2.51 million at this point in 2022, which is more than 12 percent ahead. Yesterday the gap was about 11 percent, so it keeps widening. In the last day, 2026 added about 310,000 ballots on that count while 2022 added about 243,000.
That comparison lines up the same date on the calendar. It shows how fast people have voted, not how many will vote in the end. GeorgiaVotes is also a different source on a different clock than the state's count, so the two will not match exactly.
Georgia doesn't register voters by party, so any split is an estimate. The data firm L2 models each voter's likely leaning. Its latest file is stamped 12:35 a.m. ET today and puts early voters at about 52 percent Democratic, 38 percent Republican and 10 percent neither. One caution: that file covers the same 2.48 million voters as yesterday's, so it describes who had voted through Friday morning, not the roughly 300,000 added since. It is modeled, not official, and it estimates who showed up, not how anyone voted.
Here are the biggest counties, with the official count and one-day change, plus the L2 modeled party shares (Democratic, Republican, neither) from that same file:
Those four, plus Cherokee, hold about 40 percent of every ballot counted.
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov 3. A big early total tells you about participation. It says nothing about preference, and it says nothing about the millions of active voters who haven't voted yet. I don't know how many of them will show up, and I don't think anyone does.
The people elected on Tuesday will write the rules in the 2027 session, and that session comes fast. Relationships get built before you need them, not after. If your organization has an issue coming in 2027 and nobody carrying it, start that conversation now.
Schedule a strategy conversation: https://calendly.com/bernardreynolds/true-north-strategy-conversation
Bernard Reynolds is the principal of True North Strategies, a Georgia public affairs firm.
