Voters affiliated with the Democrat Party in Connecticut far outpaced unaffiliated and Republican voters when it came to early voting and absentee voting in the lead-up to the November 2025 municipal elections, according to numbers from the Secretary of State’s Office.
Early voting, which lasts for two weeks leading up to election day, accounted for the most usage, with 192,271 ballots cast. Registered Democrats cast 93,691 early votes, almost equal to the combined total early votes of registered Republicans, who cast 40,774 early ballots, and unaffiliated voters, who cast 55,475 early votes.
Absentee voting was far lower, with only 20,330 total votes cast, with registered Democrats casting more absentee ballots than registered Republicans or unaffiliated voters combined. According to the SOTS numbers, 1,671 early votes were done with same day registration.
At a press conference Monday, Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas noted that, generally, Connecticut’s municipal elections only see votes from roughly 30 percent of the total 2.5 million registered voters in the state, compared to roughly 80 percent in presidential elections, even though municipal elections have more direct quality of life impact on residents.
“Presidents don’t fix our streetlights, they don’t decide how many teachers are in our children’s classrooms or whether our neighborhoods get a sidewalk,” Thomas said. “That all happens right here in Connecticut at the local level.”
By those numbers, roughly 8 percent of total Connecticut voters participated in early or absentee voting, or 28 percent of the generally expected turnout for municipal elections. Municipalities and some municipal voter registrars have criticized the two-week early voting window as being expensive, longer than necessary, and not improving voter turnout.
Connecticut voters approved a referendum question to allow early voting in 2022, after which the General Assembly debated and passed legislation in 2023 creating the 14-day in-person voting window. Absentee ballot voting, which expanded during the COVID pandemic, has been further expanded under a 2024 voter referendum allowing “no-excuse absentee ballots.”
Although Thomas said early and absentee voting in the 2025 municipal election has been “almost without incident,” absentee ballot fraud in Bridgeport has been a multi-year disaster that gained national attention and has thus far resulted in a primary election do-over, lawsuits, and criminal court cases. Despite the heightened scrutiny and enforcement in Bridgeport, the fraud is allegedly ongoing.
Bridgeport City Councilman Alfredo Castillo is under investigation for allegedly collecting absentee ballots for this year’s municipal election from public housing units. Castillo previously served on Bridgeport’s housing authority and had a badge allowing him access to those buildings.
Early voting has caused some confusion among some local election officials as municipalities develop protocols for handling the ballots in line with state guidance.
In Middlebury, emails mistakenly shared with an Inside Investigator reporter showed early ballots were being kept in a closet overnight instead of being delivered to the town clerk to be stored in the town safe, per the SOTS guidebook. Middlebury registrars had created, and SOTS Thomas had approved, a plan allowing the town to store the ballots in a closet overnight, although the SOTS early voting plan indicated the ballots should be stored in a fireproof and tamper-proof receptacle.
Early voting and expanded absentee ballot voting have largely been supported by the Democratic majority in the General Assembly, and largely opposed by legislative Republicans, who have been calling for more security, particularly for absentee ballot boxes, in light of the ongoing issues in Bridgeport.
At the press conference Monday, Thomas demonstrated new voting tabulators purchased with a $20 million bond by the state, which inform the voter if they’ve made an error in casting their vote, allowing them to take the ballot back and fix it. Thomas said that any voting issues should be brought to the State Elections Enforcement Commission for investigation.
Among the municipalities with the most early voting, Stratford was top in the state with 5,353 votes, followed by Milford, Greenwich, Norwalk, and Trumbull.
“While we can’t compare it directly to a presidential year, it is still clear that voters see early voting as a valid, practical way to participate,” Thomas said. “Election day is not the end of the story, it’s the beginning.”
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