WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a seismic shift from earlier midterm elections, the 2018 midterms have inspired the highest levels of early drinking in modern history, a new study shows.

According to the study, which was conducted by the University of Minnesota, millions of Americans who would normally start drinking on the night of the midterms took advantage of early drinking and began consuming alcohol days and, in some cases, weeks or months before November 6th.

“We knew that there would be some early drinking, but the magnitude of that drinking is taking even experts by surprise,” Dr. Davis Logsdon, the author of the study, said. “To put it in terms that the layman can understand, we are seeing drinking that is off the Kavanaugh chart.”

Democrats have overwhelmed Republicans in the early drinking tallies, but Logsdon warned against “reading too much into” that disparity.

“Many Democrats started their early drinking on November 8, 2016,” he said. “Two years’ worth of early and in some cases heavy drinking is skewing their numbers much higher.”