Wisconsin voters head to the polls Aug. 11 to decide who they want on the ballot, but tens of thousands have already cast their ballots early.
Early voting numbers are broken down into two groups. So far, 23,318 in-person absentee ballots have been cast. That is when voters go to their clerk's office, fill out an absentee ballot, put it in an envelope and sign it over to the clerk.
The other option is to mail in a ballot. That number currently stands at 150,919 — a figure that also includes the in-person absentee ballots.
There is no way of knowing whether those ballots belong to Republican or Democratic primary voters.
Watch: Two Wisconsin counties with the biggest early voter turnout are Milwaukee and Dane
To put those numbers in context, the August 2022 primary offers a useful comparison. That year featured a crowded Democratic Senate race that saw candidates drop out in the final two weeks before Mandela Barnes wrapped up the nomination. The 2022 race also included a competitive Republican primary for governor. Both races combined produced about 1.2 million total votes, with 295,059 early votes cast.
Barnes, who secured that Senate nomination in 2022, has since dropped out of the current race for governor.
The two biggest counties for early voter turnout right now are Dane and Milwaukee, which currently make up 30% of all early absentee ballots cast.
TMJ4 spoke with each of the candidates:
Democrats
Republicans
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