How to read thisWisconsin doesn't register voters by party, so there is no party split here: the counts show how many ballots are in, not who they are for. Comparisons line up 2026 with past elections at the same number of days before Election Day. Early ballots are not a forecast of the result. Methods & sources
What the numbers say
Absentee ballots returned, cumulative
Official WEC daily absentee reports (2022, 2024); 2026 from civicAPI, built from the same WEC reports. Includes in-person absentee (opens Oct 20, 2026). 2024 was presidential.
Ballots returned per report day, 2026 vs 2022
Change from the previous WEC report (weekend days are folded into Monday).
2026: ballots returned vs applications
Absentee applications on file (civicAPI/WEC) and ballots returned.
Sources & caveats
- 2024: Wisconsin Elections Commission daily county absentee reports, e.g. County Absentee Counts as of October 18, 2024.csv
- 2022: WEC daily absentee report attachments via the Internet Archive, e.g. Oct 21, 2022 county report
- 2022/2024 statewide series compiled from those files by ElectIndex/26_early_vote (spot-checked: Oct 18, 2024 = 305,344; Oct 21, 2022 = 225,330)
- 2026: civicAPI early-vote tracker (free public API from WEC county reports)
- 2026 is secondary. WEC pages sit behind a bot check; 2026 numbers come from civicAPI, which republishes WEC's county reports. Past years are WEC's own files.
- No 2018 series yet. WEC's 2018 daily reports weren't found online in a machine-readable form.
- Wisconsin has no party registration and WEC doesn't publish race, so there are no party or race charts. Counts are dated by report date (each report is generated at 7:30 a.m.).
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.
- No major change to absentee rules since 2018 for how ballots are cast: in-person absentee runs the two weeks before Election Day (Oct 20–Nov 1, 2026), and ballots must arrive by 8 p.m. Election Day. Wis. Stat. § 6.86
- 2024 · Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Priorities USA v. WEC: allowed drop boxes again (at clerks' discretion) (they had been barred in 2022 by Teigen v. WEC). That affects 2024 and 2026 vs 2022. 2024 WI 32 opinion