Today marks the start of early voting for all of the runoff elections, which include Houston, Bellaire, and HISD. Early voting schedule and locations can be found here; remember that EV locations outside of Houston city limits are mostly closed, as there’s no action out there. Early voting runs through December 8, so take advantage when you can.
It’s never too early to speculate about turnout. I’m not going to guess a number just yet, but I am going to guess that about half of all votes will be cast early, based on recent behavior in city runoff elections. Here’s a peek:
Runoff Pct Early ==================== 03 Mayor 36.00 03 Dist F 41.38 03 Dist G 35.53 03 Dist H 26.62 03 AL #3 35.46 03 AL #4 36.80 03 Ctrlr 36.48 05 Dist B 44.71 05 Dist C 31.97 05 AL #2 37.19 07 AL #3 51.88 07 Dist D 46.66 07 Dist E 45.47 07 AL #5 46.12 09 Dist H 47.88
Early here includes votes by mail. The 2007 At Large #3 and the 2009 District H races were both in May. I want to say that the trend is clear, but the voter universes in those non-Mayoral races were so tiny – the 35,922 ballots cast in the 2005 At Large #2 runoff were by far the most in any race – that I hesitate to draw too firm a conclusion from these samples. But my guess is that at least 40% of the votes will be cast before Election Day, perhaps as many as half of them. We’ll see how that goes.
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