How to read thisParty split = the registered party of voters who have already cast ballots, not who they voted for. Comparisons line up 2026 with past elections at the same number of days before Election Day. Past-cycle and 2026 Arizona totals come from secondary trackers (marked). Methods & sources
What the numbers say
Early ballots returned statewide, by days before Election Day
Dated by report date (Arizona time). 2026 in bold (filled dots = exact counts). Hollow dots = rounded figures as posted (e.g., "287k"). 2018 = AZ Secretary of State daily update; 2022/2024 = daily statewide tracker built from county return files; 2026 = county daily files compiled by Stealth Analytics. Early voting begins 27 days out in every cycle.
Same point in the cycle
Party margin of returned ballots
Democratic minus Republican share of ballots returned, in points (party registration, not votes). 2026 = Stealth Analytics daily tracker posts on X (statewide; the Oct 15 point is Maricopa only, hollow).
Maricopa County cross-check
Data coverage & gaps
Sources & caveats
- Arizona has no official statewide daily report in 2026. In 2018 the Secretary of State published one (posted daily on X by Garrett Archer, then the SOS's data analyst, now at ABC15). For 2022 and 2024 the only daily statewide series found is Sam Almy's tracker for the Arizona Democratic Party, built from the counties' daily early-ballot return files; it matches voters to the party's file (VAN), so it can slightly undercount. These are secondary sources, like the news and university sources used on other state pages.
- Same kind of count, different compilers. All four cycles count early ballots received by counties (before signature checks), summed across counties. Counties report on different schedules (13 small counties only have to report weekly), so any day's total can lag by a county or two. In the latest 2026 total, Pima's file is from Oct 15, Mohave's and Santa Cruz's from Oct 14, and Apache's from Oct 8.
- Report dates. Each total is the last one posted that day. Figures are rounded as posted (hollow markers); 2026 figures are exact.
- 2024 was a presidential year. 2022 and 2018 (midterms) are the fairer comparisons.
- Party splits are voter registration, not votes. 2022 has only the D-minus-R ballot gap. 2026 party shares come from Stealth Analytics' daily posts on X (@StealthPolling), not its web page, so they're added by hand rather than captured automatically. Its Oct 16 post states the margin as "D+4.9" and the same day in 2022 as "D+6.2"; the chart uses D minus R from the posted shares (40.8 − 36.9 = D+3.9). The 2022 figure from Almy's tracker is D+4.1. Early returns swing a lot, especially before Maricopa's big batches arrive.
Law changes that affect comparisons
Rule changes between cycles can shift how (not just how many) people vote early. Keep these in mind when comparing to past years.
- 2021 · SB 1485 (Laws 2021, ch. 359): renamed the Permanent Early Voting List the Active Early Voting List. Voters who don't vote an early ballot in two consecutive election cycles can be removed after a notice. 2024 and 2026 are the first cycles that count, and the first notices go out by Jan 15, 2027, so no one has been removed yet and the list sizes in 2022, 2024 and 2026 aren't affected. Source · Summary