It’s 45 days before an Election Day that will determine control of Congress for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s second term and 20 states are already mailing ballots to voters. That includes the hard-fought Senate contests in Texas, Michigan and North Carolina.

Tens of millions of Americans will have already cast their ballots before Nov. 3, thanks largely to the Supreme Court earlier this week blocking an effort by the Trump administration to add new restrictions to voting by mail. Thirteen states will in the next 15 days join those that have already sent ballots to voters.

Meanwhile, early in-person voting started Friday in Idaho, Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia, according to the Center for Election Innovation and Research, marking the final stretch of an election season that has increasingly become a referendum on Trump.

All of this voting gets underway amid weeks of bruising economic news for Republicans, including an uptick in gasoline and diesel prices, stubborn inflation, increases in mortgage rates and drops in consumer sentiment. But House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted this week that Republicans aren’t nervous that voter dissatisfaction with the economy will hurt them at the polls.

“We’re constantly coming up with new and innovative things to continue to work to bring down the cost of living,” he told reporters Wednesday after sending lawmakers home earlier than scheduled until after the election.

Still, just over a week after the Republican midterm convention, the two-day bonanza hasn’t yielded the bump in polls that often follows political conventions. Democrats lead Republicans by nearly nine percentage points on a generic ballot, according to averages compiled by Real Clear Politics.

“Let’s be clear about one thing: Democrats now have the advantage on every issue,” House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday, pointing to favorable polling on the economy, healthcare and the war in Iran. “The public is with us.”

Trump at times has seemed resigned to losing GOP control of Congress even as he has sought to tilt the race in Republicans’ favor with mixed results.

His push for a mid-decade redrawing of House districts created a slight advantage for Republicans. But his effort to restrict mail-in ballots was rejected by the Supreme Court, which halted a U.S. Postal Service rule requiring states to adopt uniform envelopes for ballots and submit a list of eligible voters to an online portal.

Linda Farmer, auditor for Pierce County, Washington., said that officials are “breathing a huge sigh of relief” after the Supreme Court’s decision. Washington, which will send ballots out next month, exclusively conducts elections by mail.

“We’ve been busy trying to get the word out that your ballots will come to you,” Farmer told reporters at a briefing hosted by Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions. She added that they’re also urging voters to return their ballots early or to use drop boxes to avoid any problems due to postal delays, especially in rural areas.

Trump, who has voted by mail, has long railed against the practice and vowed to do away with mail-in ballots entirely, despite little evidence of fraud. The practice has grown more popular, surging during the pandemic. In the 2024 presidential election, nearly a third of votes were cast by mail. In eight states and Washington, D.C., all voters receive ballots in the mail.

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(With assistance from Zoe Tillman and Gregory Korte.)

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