From EPEC Team News & Analysis newsletter:
We are at the halfway mark of Virginia’s 45-day early voting stretch ahead of Election Day (Nov. 4th) with more than 500,000 ballots in countable status, and more than 800,000 ballots in various stages of approval for in-person and absentee by-mail.
That works out to over 8% turnout of the active-voter electorate of 5.9 million as of early October.
The tallies show a surge in voter turnout that is well past 2021 voting benchmarks the last time Virginia elected a Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General, as well as a House of Delegates in 2023.
In-person early voting is up by an almost two-to-one margin compared to 2021.
The last time Virginia voted in a new House of Delegates in 2023, the numbers were nearly half of today’s in-person turnout at the midway mark of early voting.
As of Friday, Oct. 10 we see:
Countable ballots = 507,921
This represents mail-in ballots in “pre-processed” or “marked” status and the sum of “on-machine” voting in person, and is almost twice as many as the tally of over 285,400 countable ballots around the same time in 2021 for the last governor’s race.
As the chart below shows, we see 340,404 on-machine voters as Virginia headed into Saturday voting, up by a two-to-one margin from 2021.
That leaves about 167,608 of the total “countable” tally as mail-in.
As of Oct 12, we observe just over 267,000 ballots still in “issued” status, which means they are still “out” or have yet to be “marked” as received back and queued up for the “pre-processing” phase of absentee ballot handling that entails checking that it contains all legally material information to be counted.
Of the early voting tally, we also see 6,864 who are so-called “zero-propensity” voters, meaning they show zero voter history going back at least five years.
These first-time voters might be 18-year-olds voting for the first time, or they may be voters who are actively registered, but have not been inspired to vote in past years.
EPEC Team Senior Analyst and member of EPEC’s Board of Directors, Rick Naigle, has worked up some charts to help readers see the progress of early voting so far.
Overall, we see about 800,000 ballots in various stages of approval for voting. As mentioned above, some 267,000 ballots remain in “issued” status, as shown in the grey shading.
The next chart shows the percentages of absentee mail in ballots that are “still out” to provide a sense of scale regarding the mail-in ballots yet to be processed for tabulation, compared to the “on machine” voters so far.
Similar trends are showing in the House Delegate race, which showed 550,324 on-machine early voting by the end of early voting in 2023 for all 100 House of Delegates races, with some 800,000 countable ballots by the end of Early Voting.
As of Friday, the 2025 early voting tally for House races stood at 340,304 on-machine ballots cast so far, 167,608 mail-in ballots, for 507,921 countable ballots for all 100 House of Delegate races. We are preparing a deeper dive of the House races.
L2 Data is modeling the political affiliation of turnout thus far and other demographics, such as early voting dominated by voters aged 50 and above.
https://x.com/L2political/status/1976713135684755616
To check on Turnout Trends by Locality, see our interactive map, which we are updating throughout early voting:
https://epec.info/epec-team-is-tracking-virginias-2025-general-election/
For Summary Data of turnout, EPEC Team’s 2025 DAL Summary Data Tracker is here:
https://digitalpollwatchers.org/files/DALTracker/2025_November_General/metrics
More on those trends, House Delegate races, and a deep dive on ballot status issues that we are detecting in our next report. #
Find your polling place and check your registration status at the ELECT portal here:
https://vote.elections.virginia.gov/VoterInformation
P.S. — The deadline for Comments about Proof of Citizenship on voter-registration forms is Oct. 20 with the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
Over 300,000 comments have been logged so far, which includes a massive surge of over 200,000 comments that appeared almost overnight.
If you want to comment and read some of them, the links are below.
https://www.regulations.gov/document/EAC-2025-0236-0001/comment
As the EAC explains on its comment page:
On July 16, 2025, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC or Commission) received a petition for rulemaking submitted by America First Legal Foundation asking the Commission to amend EAC Regulations and the National Mail Voter Registration Form to require documentary proof of United States citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
Comments can be added here:
https://www.regulations.gov/document/EAC-2025-0236-0001
Background on the Request for Rule-Making before the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is also on the comment page at Regulations.gov:
https://www.regulations.gov/document/EAC-2025-0236-0001