Georgia voters broke a turnout record for early voting in a primary election on the final day of early voting. Statewide turnout was 13.9%.
About 1 million people turned out for early voting as polls closed Friday, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office. The previous record for early voting in a Georgia primary was about 857,000 in 2022.
And Democrats have flipped the script on Republicans this year compared to the early voting period in the 2022 primary.
Republicans ended that round with a 15 percentage point turnout advantage over Democrats. Later that year, the GOP went on to hold control of the state legislature and every statewide executive office (but failed to flip Democrat Raphael Warnock’s Senate seat).
This year, Democrats have a 15 percentage point turnout advantage over Republicans, with about 580,000 voters pulling Democratic ballots and 430,000 pulling Republican ones. Some 16,000 voters chose a nonpartisan ballot.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he’s “definitely concerned” about the early Democratic advantage.
“I also understand there’s a lot of people that are still truly undecided, not just in the Senate race, but I think in a lot of the downballot races,” he told reporters on Thursday at a campaign stop in Kennesaw with U.S. Senate candidate Derek Dooley. “[It’s] been such an unusual year in the governor’s race where you got so much money being spent. The other money that’s being spent in downballot races isn’t really penetrating.”
There are consequential races up and down the ballot this year, including for U.S. Senate, governor and other statewide offices, all 14 U.S. House seats, every seat in the state legislature, and many local seats.
Early voting for this year’s primary ended on Friday. Election Day is on Tuesday.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office added party affiliation totals to its election data hub for the first time this year, giving more insight into how votes are trending.
Early voting turnout in red, blue counties
Heavily Republican counties have both the highest — and lowest — turnout percentages so far.
The highest turnout was in Bleckley County with 27.5%, followed by Taliaferro, Butts, Oconee and Towns. Taliaferro was the only county that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, while the other four voted for Donald Trump by wide margins.
U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins and gubernatorial candidate Burt Jones are both from Butts County.
The lowest early voting turnout percentage in the state was in Whitfield County with 6.0%. Murray, Seminole, Long and Clinch counties also landed in the bottom five. All five counties overwhelmingly went for Trump in 2024.
President Trump has often criticized early voting — particularly mail-in voting — making unfounded claims that the processes lead to fraud. But he voted early in-person in 2024 and voted by mail in special elections in Florida earlier this year.
Three of the largest Democratic strongholds in Georgia had turnout percentages in the teens, with Fulton at 16.6%, DeKalb at 18.0% and Clayton at 14.9%. Cobb and Gwinnett — which have increasingly come under Democratic control in the last decade — are at 15.3% and 12.7% turnout, respectively.
Those are all larger counties where Democrats are expected to dominate in raw voting numbers. For instance, Bleckley County did twice as well as Fulton by turnout percentage. But Fulton (123,000) dwarfs Bleckley (1,800) in the number of voters that turned out.
WABE’s Rahul Bali contributed to this report.
This article appears in 2026 Elections: Candidate lists, news.
