Here’s your Day Seven EV report for the June HCAD runoff. And just for kicks, let’s do a comparison with the May election for this day in the EV process.
Month Mail Early Total
==============================
May 13,446 10,282 23,728
June 9,364 10,547 19,911
The difference between the May election and the June runoff, at least from an early vote turnout perspective, is entirely in the mail ballots. And as discussed before, that’s more a matter of shape than anything else. There were 10,858 mail ballots on Day One of the May election, but just over 2,400 further ballots had arrived since then to that point. Only 1,699 mail ballots had made it in by Day One for the June races, but counting Saturday another 7,665 had come in, which closed the gap considerably. If the normal last-day patterns hold for the June election as they did in May, and if mail ballots continue to come in, we could wind up with very similar EV totals when all is said and done.
Not that they’d be anything to crow about overall, of course. Turnout in May was a paltry 2.18%, well below the past performances for admittedly less weird elections. I’d still bet the under for that in this race. We also don’t have SD15 pushing people to the polls, which is a somewhat marginal effect given the absolute numbers, but still something. On the other hand, it’s not crazy to me to think that Runoff Day voting could be higher than usual, given the compressed timeline for this race. Election Day in May favored the Republicans, so if that is the case I’d prefer it to be with a different composition. I have no idea what to expect and I’m definitely not making any predictions, I’m just suggesting possibilities. Get out and vote if you haven’t, and keep reminding your friends and helping with the mail efforts.