Over 1 million ballots and counting: Which Wisconsin county has seen the most early voting?

Since early voting opened on Oct. 22, Wisconsin has already received over 1 million absentee ballots.

That includes ballots cast not only through in-person absentee voting but also through other methods like the U.S. Postal Service and drop boxes.

According to a Journal Sentinel analysis of the latest Wisconsin Elections Commission data posted Thursday morning, Milwaukee County, the most populous county in Wisconsin, has received the highest number of absentee ballots. It is closely followed by Dane County and Waukesha County, the second and third most populous counties in Wisconsin.

The Journal Sentinel also calculated the percentage of absentee ballots returned compared to the number sent to voters in each county so far. With 94% of absentee ballots returned, Washington County sits in first place in its share of ballots returned. Vernon County, on the other hand, has only 77% of absentee ballots returned, the lowest share across the state.

Type your county in the search bar or click through the pages to see how many absentee ballots your county has received. Click on the other column headers to sort the table by different criteria.

In the table above, "absentee ballots returned" refers to the total number absentee ballots elections officials have received to date. "Percent returned" represents the share of absentee ballots cast so far out of the total number of people who received an absentee ballot.

The total number of absentee ballots cast in Wisconsin has also far surpassed the number of absentee ballots cast in 2016.

Compare the total number of absentee ballots cast so far this year to the past two presidential elections:

Early in-person voting has broken the record of the previous two elections. Election experts say this could be because people got into the habit of receiving absentee ballots in their mail during the pandemic in 2020 and trust early in-person voting more than voting by mail.

Check the trends in the graph below:

This story will be updated each day as the Wisconsin Elections Commission makes the latest absentee ballot data available.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Alison Dirr contributed to this report.

Eva Wen is a data reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: See early voting, absentee ballot numbers for each Wisconsin county