Rubbish Check
Guardian US · 31 October 2026
source“‘More than 50m Americans cast ballots in early voting with three days to go before midterms’”
R2/ 10
Lightly altered
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates the Guardian's claim that "more than 50m Americans cast ballots in early voting" a 2/10 because the figure matches the University of Florida Election Lab's own tracker and the timing checks out, with only the inherent noise of mid-count tracker data left unflagged.
The Verdict
Lightly altered, not spun. The headline states a raw, sourced number with no partisan framing or loaded language, and the trajectory it describes (climbing sharply in the final days before Tuesday) lines up with independent trackers. The only ding is that it presents a snapshot tally as settled when such counts are still being revised as states report in.
What actually happened
The University of Florida Election Lab's early-voting tracker recorded over 50.5 million ballots cast nationally as of the Saturday before the 2026 midterms, a count that other outlets' trackers of the same data had been building toward all week. The Guardian's piece uses this single top-line figure in the headline and reserves the partisan breakdown, state-level detail, and Senate-race context for the body.
Key facts
- More than 50.5m early votes have been cast across the US as of Saturday morning, according to an analysis by the University of Florida.
- This is already nearly 5m more votes than the total number of early votes made in the last midterm elections, in 2022.
- Independent trackers show the steep run-up to that figure: more than 39 million Americans cast early votes as of six days before the election, with about 20 million voting early in person and nearly 19 million by mail, and by two days later more than 46 million Americans had voted early, topping the 45.9 million who voted early in the entire 2022 midterm.
- Registered Democrats have cast 10.7 million early votes compared with 7.8 million registered Republicans, consistent with other trackers showing registered Democrats cast 43.9% of early ballots, Republicans 31.3% and unaffiliated voters 24.8%.
What to watch for
Watch whether the final certified early-vote total holds near 50m or gets revised as laggard counties and mail-ballot processing catch up, since trackers "vary slightly by tracker as states report new data." Also watch whether the Democratic lead in party-registered early voters (10.7m vs 7.8m) translates into actual results, given that party registration is not a vote count and early-voter enthusiasm has been an unreliable predictor in past cycles.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
