A busy midterm ballot had election watchers expecting Minnesota to live up to its reputation as having the nation’s most politically engaged citizenry.

At St. Stephanus Lutheran Church in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood, election judge Mary’n Hallock said about noon Tuesday that voter turnout was “very high for a midterm.”

“Usually, we have a couple of lulls during the day,” Hallock said. “We haven’t had a lull.”

Ramsey County spokesman John Siqveland said polling places were “steady to busy all day long.”

Voter turnout numbers for the state were not available by publication time.

But as of Monday, voters had turned in well over twice as many absentee ballots as in the last midterm election in 2014.

The Secretary of State’s office said early voting statewide was up 129 percent; Ramsey County had three times as many early ballots as in 2014.

The 2014 midterm election was the first year Minnesota allowed voters to cast an early ballot without a written excuse. But this year’s early voting was more comparable to a presidential election year.

On the eve of Tuesday’s election, early voting was just 5 percent off pace compared to 2016.

“Minnesotans are on pace to maintain our title as No. 1 in the country in voter participation,” Secretary of State Steve Simon said last week.

In Minnesota, 75 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in 2016 and 51 percent in 2014.

Minnesota has an estimated 4,064,389 residents who are eligible to vote. Eighty-two percent of them were registered before Tuesday’s election.

The state also allows for same-day registration, which 152,101 voters took advantage of in 2014.

Frederick Melo contributed to this report.