(The Center Square) – Virginia Democrats won 55.7% of Election Day votes in this year’s U.S. Senate race, their highest share in the top race on the ballot across six general elections dating to 2021.

Nearly half of the Senate votes were cast early, according to a Virginia Public Access Project analysis of preliminary state results.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner carried the Election Day vote over Republican Bert Mizusawa, who received 43.9%, the project found. Warner’s Election Day share exceeded the 53.8% that Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, received in last year’s governor’s race, according to the same analysis.

Warner won a fourth term, according to The Associated Press. He received 61.2% of the statewide vote to Mizusawa’s 38.6% in the preliminary Virginia Department of Elections tally the project analyzed Thursday.

Warner’s lead among early voters was about three times as wide as his Election Day lead. The project found he won 67.6% of the combined early in-person and mail vote, compared with 32.2% for Mizusawa.

Republicans carried the Election Day vote in the top race in each of the four elections the project examined from 2021 through 2024. Spanberger broke that streak last year. Warner also received a higher share among both early in-person and mail voters than Democrats did in any of the previous five elections in the analysis.

The project found that 54.1% of Senate votes were cast on Election Day. Another 36.6% were cast early in person and 9.3% by mail.

Together, early ballots made up 45.9% of the preliminary Senate vote, up from 43.1% in last year’s governor’s race. Early in-person voting accounted for the increase, while mail ballots made up a smaller share.

In Arlington County, early voting expanded from one site to three on Oct. 17, when voting began at the Walter Reed and Langston-Brown community centers in addition to Courthouse Plaza, according to the county elections office.

In the commonwealth’s 2018 U.S. Senate race, just 10% of votes were cast early, according to the project.

Virginia began allowing voters to cast absentee ballots without giving a reason in July 2020, according to the Department of Elections. That fall, during the COVID-19 pandemic, 63% of votes in Virginia’s presidential race were cast early, the project found. The project also noted that the state began reporting early in-person and mail votes separately in 2021.