Voters braved long lines in the early November cold to cast their ballots across the Beehive State on Tuesday night, and Utah’s most populous county certainly showed out.

Roughly 65.1% of registered voters in Salt Lake County cast ballots in the 2026 midterms, according to Wednesday morning numbers from county Clerk Lannie Chapman. That amounts to about 393,900 ballots – including 115,000 mail-in ballots the clerk’s office received on Tuesday and 31,000 ballots from in-person Election Day voters around the county.

Those numbers are a little higher than the 2022 midterms, according to data from the Utah lieutenant governor’s office.

That year, about 65% of Salt Lake County’s registered voters at the time cast ballots. While that percentage essentially mirrors this year’s turnout, 2022 had fewer registered voters overall. Simply put: 9,336 fewer voters participated in the 2022 midterms than in 2026.

The last midterm with turnout that exceeded 2026 levels was in 2018, when a total of 423,948 Salt Lake County residents cast ballots, according to the lieutenant governor’s office.

It’s unclear what turnout is in Utah’s other 28 counties this year, but Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said in a social media post that election officials in Cache, Davis and Utah counties were “still reporting hour-long lines” nearly 40 minutes after polls closed Tuesday night.

The state delayed publishing early election results because lines to vote extended out of polling locations past 9 p.m. Under state law, anyone who lines up to vote prior to polls closing at 8 p.m. must be allowed to cast a ballot.

At about 8 p.m., a polling location at Salt Lake City’s Main Library still had dozens of voters waiting to cast their ballots, and a polling official expected the line would last at least 45 minutes.

In Henderson’s final early voting update ahead of polls opening Tuesday, she wrote on social media that statewide turnout — which accounted for the ballots that county clerks had received and processed — sat at 30%.