More than 30 million Americans have voted in the midterms, with a surge of younger voters

By Aaron Kessler and Annie Grayer | CNN News

Early voting continues to be explosive one day before Election Day, as an energized American electorate weighs in on its government.

As of Monday morning, at least 31 million people have voted early nationwide, according to data collected by Catalist, a data company that works with Democrats and others, to compile counts of ballots cast before Election Day, either early in-person or by mail.

That’s far more than the 19 million who voted early at this point during the 2014 midterms. In fact, it’s more than the 22 million early votes cast in the entire 2014 election.

The data suggests an electorate deeply engaged in voters’ first real opportunity to offer a verdict on the presidency of Donald Trump, who has actively tried to turn the election into a referendum on himself.

Encouraging signs for Democrats include a clear surge in young and first-time voters in the early voting data and a larger percentage of women voters, who have appeared supportive of Democrats in recent national polls. Also, in states where party identification is available, Democrats are a larger portion of the early voting electorate than they were in 2014.

It’s important not to draw conclusions from the data. The country has been moving toward a more robust use of early voting for years. It’s also not clear if the early vote in key states is showing up to support Trump and Republicans or Democrats.

But it is certainly true that 33 states have eclipsed their early voting totals from this point in 2014, according to Catalist.

Age

The Catalist records show the share of early voters under the age of 30 has increased substantially this year in many states, compared to the previous cycles.

In at least 10 states, voters under 30 make up a larger percentage of the early vote this cycle than they did in 2014.

In four states — Texas, Georgia, Nevada and New Jersey — the share of the youth vote under 30 this cycle has roughly doubled compared with 2014.

Check out what’s happened in Texas and Georgia, for instance:

First-timers

The records also allow for examining which early voters have registered to vote for the first time — at least for 2018 (previous years were not available).

In North Dakota and Nevada, 11 percent of the early voting electorate were first-time voters. By contrast, in Illinois, Kansas, New Jersey and West Virginia, first-time voters only comprise between 3 percent and 4 percent of early voting.

Gender

Women continue to outpace men in early voting in every state where Catalist provided data to CNN, with the exceptions of Montana, Nevada and Alaska.

In four states — Georgia, Florida, Kansas, and New Jersey — women comprise at least 10 percentage points more of the early vote than men.

Party registration

The records provided by Catalist to CNN includes party registration for early vote tallies in select states. (Those numbers reflect a count of the voter’s party affiliation, but do not indicate who a voter actually chose on the ballot.)

While most states are on par with the party breakdown of previous cycles, which generally favor Republicans, Democrats have made gains in several notable places since 2014.

In Nevada, Democrats have actually pulled ahead of Republicans as a share of the early vote this time, and in several other states have increased their share over 2014.

Some key states do not have party registration information at all — such as Texas and Georgia.