Lines are forming earlier and crowds are thicker at Greater Cincinnati polling sites this month, with early in-person voting across Butler, Clermont, Warren and Hamilton counties running more than double the pace seen during the 2022 midterm election. Voters walking into the Butler County Board of Elections in Hamilton, Ohio, have been greeted by a crowded parking lot and campaign signs lining the walkway, a scene far busier than four years ago.
According to WLWT, Butler County residents had cast more than 11,000 early in-person ballots during the first eight days of voting this cycle. That builds on numbers reported earlier in the month by WCPO, which found more than 6,000 votes had already been cast in Butler County during just the first week, with early in-person voting available at the county's board of elections office at 1802 Princeton Road, Suite 600, in Hamilton.
Among the voters showing up in person this year is Aaron Asa, who told WLWT he switched from mail-in voting to voting early in person this time around because it was convenient given his work and other commitments. He said he appreciated physically submitting his ballot and seeing others do the same. His daughter, Kayla Asa, is voting for the first time at 18 and said she had looked forward to it for a long time, calling it important to her.
Hamilton County Shows Sharp Partisan Swings
Board of elections data cited by WLWT shows Hamilton County's early in-person turnout jumped 158% among Democrats during the first eight days of voting, compared with the same stretch in 2022. Republicans in the county saw a 106% increase over the same period, while unaffiliated voters posted the steepest climb at 208%.
Those local swings track with a broader statewide pattern. One week into early voting, nearly 230,000 ballots had been cast statewide, with Democrats accounting for about 95,000, unaffiliated voters 67,000 and Republicans nearing 64,000, according to WCPO. In Hamilton County specifically, the station reported Democrats had returned more than 7,800 early ballots, compared with about 2,000 at the same point in 2022 — an increase of nearly 300%.
Clermont and Warren counties also saw their raw early in-person voting numbers climb, per WLWT's reporting, though the increases there were measured in overall vote counts rather than the percentage breakdowns tracked in Hamilton County.
Mail Voting Falls As In-Person Turnout Climbs
The in-person surge is coinciding with a steep drop in mail voting. WLWT reported that mail-in voting in Butler County declined nearly 30% as more voters chose to cast ballots early in person instead. That local shift mirrors a statewide trend: mail-ballot requests fell 26%, from 812,198 at the comparable point in the 2022 cycle to 601,277 this year, according to Signal Ohio, which also noted that most Ohio early voting has gone in-person since 2023, reaching 62% of the early vote by May 2026.
Nicole Unzicker said early in-person voting has increased significantly this cycle. She noted that Ohio allows voters to cast ballots ahead of Election Day, and that more awareness of the option could be driving some of the shift, as some voters choose to vote early simply in case they are unavailable on November 3.
Could Turnout Reach 60%?
Butler County has historically seen turnout near 50% in gubernatorial elections, but Unzicker said she would like to see this cycle reach 55% to 60% if the current pace holds. That hope lines up with estimates reported by FOX19, which quoted officials saying the county could be looking at 55 or 60 percent turnout if voting continues at the current rate. FOX19 also reported Butler County was seeing more than 1,500 voters a day during the period it examined.
Statewide, the early numbers are striking: Ohioans cast 194,841 ballots in person during the first week of early voting this year, compared with 50,368 after a week in 2022, according to the Ohio Capital Journal, which also found seniors accounted for more than half of ballots cast through the Monday it reviewed.
Still, Unzicker cautioned against reading too much into the early surge. She said it remains too early to predict overall turnout from the increase in early voting, adding that final voting trends are difficult to forecast from only the first two weeks of the process. Early in-person voting continues through November 1, according to the Ohio Secretary of State's office, which also notes that regular absentee ballots must reach a voter's county board of elections no later than 7:30 p.m. to count.
