Kentucky votes early three ways, and two need an excuse. Mail-in absentee ballots are only for voters with an excuse (for example age, illness or disability, or being out of the county); the request portal opened Sept 19 and closes Oct 20. Voters with an excuse can also vote excused in-person absentee on Oct 21–23 and Oct 26–28. No-excuse in-person early voting, open to everyone, runs only three days: Thursday Oct 29 to Saturday Oct 31. So for most of October this site mostly shows mail ballots, and in-person numbers start on Oct 21. Kentucky registers voters by party; the State Board of Elections reports Democratic and Republican separately, and everyone else (independents and small parties) shows here as Other.
Source: the Kentucky State Board of Elections' daily absentee spreadsheet (each county × Democratic / Republican / all, posted each morning for the day before), every 2026 file since Sept 20 and the 2024 files still online. Registered voters: the SBE's registration statistics at the close of books for each general election.
Where 2026 stands
Mail and in person, by party
Cumulative ballots: 2026 against 2024
Show every day as a table
Turnout so far by party
Each party's cumulative share of ballots cast: 2026 so far vs 2024, same day
Share of all ballots with a party (mail returned plus in person; military and overseas ballots have no party) through each day with an SBE file (cumulative, not that day alone), against the same number of days before Election Day in 2024 (party at the time). "± pts" is 2026 minus 2024: read down a column to see how each party's share is shifting day to day. The margin is Democratic minus Republican, in points of those ballots so far; "Shift" is 2026's margin minus 2024's, so D +2.0 means 2 points more Democratic than 2024. ≈ marks a day with no 2024 file, filled in between its neighbors.
Who's voting, per 100,000 registered voters
Ballots cast so far (mail returned plus in person) by each party's voters ÷ its registered voters, per 100,000 of them, so parties of very different size can be compared. Solid lines are 2026, dashed lines 2024 on the same days before Election Day.
Map: where ballots are coming in
All 120 counties on one scale. Click or tap a county to make it the geography for every section.