One sort-of full week of early voting down, seven more days to go. Let’s check the board:
Year Mail Early Total
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2012 6,055 8,242 14,297
2016 8,850 14,554 23,404
2020 15,101 25,260 40,361
2024 6,663 24,646 31,309
2012 12,915 17,643 30,558
2016 12,203 21,348 33,551
2020 16,528 24,785 41,313
2024 3,356 30,890 34,246
As a reminder, Dem totals are on top, Republican ones on the bottom. Here are the Day Four totals for this year, and here are the final totals from 2012, 2016, and 2020.
Dems actually gained about 300 votes on the Republican total Friday, thanks to a big haul in mail ballots, 2,216 for Dems and 237 for Republicans. Dems still have a lot of mail ballots out, which will help them catch up a bit more going forward. The weekend is all about in person voting, though, so we’ll see if Republicans keep up their pace.
Week Two is always much bigger than Week One, with the last two days easily being the biggest. I don’t feel like I have enough data points to make a guesstimate about final early turnout, but I’m comfortable saying Dems will top 100K in early voting, which will far exceed 2012 – hell, it will outpace the final total for 2012 – and will easily exceed 2016. Barring something strange, 2020 is out of reach. Republicans may exceed their 2016 total, which was higher than the Dems, and will also likely fall short of 2020. My thought that Dems would outpace Republicans is looking shaky now, but we’ll see where we are in a few days.
Here’s the Derek Ryan report through Thursday. He notes that the electorate for both parties is pretty old right now, and that there’s a modest amount of crossover voting, again for each party. That’s a pretty normal thing – I’m old enough to remember how common it was here for Democratic lawyers to vote in the Republican primary so they could have a say on who the judges are; I’ll bet there’s some of that on the other side now – so keep any complaints you may hear about it in perspective.
I’ll post the next update on Monday. Have you voted yet?
Christina Morales will have a challenger next cycle. She has picked a fight with a former Mayor over the gray hound bus station that is not even in her district. The Latinos in the area are very upset with her because people in the immediate area are using the bus station services as an affordable transportation option and Christina has not presented any data on crime or traffic to substantiate her behavior. There are so many issues in District 145 that she should be focused on.
Didn’t you state that was supposed to happen this time?
Besides, if anyone is to blame for the bus station, it is the Republican-loving ex-council member from District I, Robert Gallegos.