AUSTIN, Texas (KBTX) - Friday, Nov. 4 is the last day of early voting in the 2022 midterm elections, and millions of Texans have already cast their ballots.

Derek Ryan of Ryan Data & Research joined First News at Four to discuss how this year’s numbers at the polls are measuring up to previous elections.

Comparison to previous elections

Through Thursday, Nov. 3 there have been 4.7 million votes cast in person and by mail in Texas, this is down compared to four years ago.

“We’ve got a lot of ground to cover if we’re going to try to reach the numbers we saw in 2018,″ said Ryan.

That year, 8.3 million total people voted in the election.

Voters by gender and age group

In Texas, voters are split nearly 50/50 for men and women for the 2022 election.

Ryan also says older voters are showing up in higher numbers than younger voters.

This year, the 50 to 69 age range made up 43% of voters in Texas, the largest population. The 18 to 29 population made up only 8% of voters in the state. This number is, not surprisingly, higher in Brazos County where the large student population makes up 16% of the voters.

Voters by previous election history

As far as party turnout, 42% of people who voted early in the state are registered Republican voters. Registered Democratic voters made up about 29% of participants in the state’s early voting. The percentage of registered Republicans was higher in Brazos County, sitting at 52%, meanwhile voters with a previous Democratic primary history made up 21% of the vote.

Voting method

Ryan says despite the pandemic, the state’s ballot by mail numbers were lower than previous cycles.

“It seems that people have decided that they’d rather vote in person this year versus by mail,” he said.

In 2018 there were about 540,000 votes by mail in Texas, meanwhile for this year only about 300,000 people have voted by mail so far.

More information

Find more election data on the Texas Secretary of State’s website.

Visit Ryan Data & Research’s website here.

Watch the full interview in the player above.

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