Early voting has concluded for the primary runoffs. Here’s the final EV report, and here are the final totals:
Party Mail Early Total
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Dem 16,767 25,294 42,061
GOP 13,187 50,498 63,685
You can compare to Day Three. As is always the case, the last day was the busiest for in person voting. Republicans have already exceeded their runoff turnout from 2018, but they only had four races then, and only one of them was countywide, for a District Court position. The runoff in CD02 generated more than half of their total votes. Dems had a runoff for Governor, for all of the countywide executive positions, and for CD07. We will end up with more votes in this runoff than in 2018, though given the different nature of each, for each party, I don’t know how much it matters. I’ll put it to you this way: Dems had 35K turnout in the 2006 primary runoff, which was almost the same amount as the 2006 primary. Republicans drew all of 10K for their runoff, which consisted of one appellate court position and the open seat in HD133. You have to look past the topline numbers, because the races themselves matter.
Anyway. At a wild guess, I’d say Dems end up with 60-70K, Republicans with 85-100K. I’m told (because I asked) that mail ballot rejections were running at around 12% and trending slightly down after the initial batch. Still way too high, but at least it’s down from where we were in March. I’ll be on the lookout for totals from around the state. Have you voted yet?
I have to think that the higher GOP turnout is an indication of more enthusiasm and augurs well for successes in November.
Maybe, but I think it’s too race-dependent to draw such a conclusion. Republicans had more than four times the turnout of Dems in the 2012 runoffs (135K for Rs, 30K for Dems), and that didn’t augur anything. We’re still talking about an overall very small number of voters.