I haven’t been following the daily early voting reports for the runoffs very closely. Only a small portion of the populace is voting, so comparisons to the November EV totals don’t mean anything. But we’re most of the way through the EV period, and I voted yesterday, so I thought I’d take a look. You can see the report through Saturday here. So far, about 15K votes have been cast, with an almost exact 50-50 split between mail ballots and in person ballots.
For what it’s worth, there were about 48K votes cast in the HISD districts that have runoffs. I’m not including the HCC 8 total as there’s overlap – I’m in both HISD I and HCC 8. Maybe we get to about 20K early votes by the end of the period on Tuesday – I’ll take a look after early voting ends. I would guess that in the end maybe 30-35K total votes are cast – I’d bet that early voting will be a significant majority, maybe two thirds of the final total. All of this is of course extremely back-of-the-envelope, but I feel reasonably comfortable saying that final runoff turnout won’t equal or surpass November turnout. At least, not cumulatively – it’s possible one of the districts could be running ahead. I’ll revise all of this when I see the final EV numbers.
One more thing – I voted at the West Gray multi-service center, which used to be my go-to place but isn’t now that there are places closer to my house, and since I don’t have a commute that takes me past there any more. This was the first time I’ve voted there without seeing a single candidate or campaign volunteer. That place is always jumping, so that felt very weird. Have you voted, and if so did you encounter anyone with a campaign?
8 days and counting………
I voted at West Gray on the first day of Early Voting and there was one Eva Laredo volunteer during the early afternoon.
That makes sense because volunteers are more likely to be useful doing Get Out the Vote work than working the polls. If someone comes to vote in the runoff with only one or two elections, it’s going to be a heavily lift to flip their vote.
Laredo makes more sense than an HISD candidate because someone may be there primarily to vote in the HISD race and may feel less strongly about their HCC choice.
In the East End they moved the voting locale from the Ripley Community Center to the Felix Fraga HCC Campus, and – anecdotally speaking — the poll workers outnumbered the voters.
A few Loredo yard signs here and there in the neighborhood, including the parking lot. She also sent a page-sized mailer with a horrible photo of herself seemingly dozing off during a meeting while the header claims that she is “working hard every day to protect our families’ futures.” Stange casino and locked steel safe imagery.
She’ll probably win, though: Female, Hispanic, incumbent. Three strikes and you are in.
Jharrett Bryantt not a good name for a low-info race unless with preexisting personal or ethnic constituency.Though endorsed by the HC, name doesn’t resonate. Haven’t seen an political ads either.
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