Early voting skews the 2026 margin

When polls separate people who have already voted or say they definitely will from other registered voters, Democrats show a substantially larger lead in this YouGov/Economist survey — suggesting early voters this cycle are disproportionately Democratic. If early‑voter composition holds, late‑campaign shocks will have less leverage on the ultimate outcome because a larger share of the electorate is already cast. — If early voting is concentrated in one party, it changes how campaigns allocate resources, how forecasters weight pre‑election polls, and how the public interprets late events and claims about momentum or fraud.