We’ll start with the numbers and then go on to the items of interest. Here are the final daily EV reports for the 2022 and 2018 primaries. Here’s the Day Three EV report, and here are the numbers:
Year Mail Early Total
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2018 Dem 8,241 10,896 19,137
2018 GOP 11,558 10,781 22,339
2022 Dem 4,677 15,064 19,741
2022 GOP 2,964 17,455 20,419
2026 Dem 2,310 40,100 42,410
2026 GOP 1,604 26,206 27,810
As a reminder, Dems had higher turnout in the end in 2018, while Republicans had higher turnout in 2022. But Dems are more than doubling their output from the two previous cycles, while Republicans are up modestly. Three days in and Dems are at a quarter of their entire turnout for both 2018 and 2022. I don’t think we’re going to see a reversion here.
At this point I will pause on the daily comparisons, because it gets tricky thanks to the differing off days. I will still post some updates from this year, and I should have some other data to talk about in the meantime. I’ll pick up the daily comparisons starting with next Tuesday’s results.
In other matters: Here’s the Star-Telegram on the strong Democratic turnout on Day One in Tarrant County. Day Two had two thousand more votes cast than Day One, with Dems again having the higher number. The story didn’t give the exact totals, though. Keep it up, y’all.
Not early voting related, but a weird story from Tarrant County that I wanted to note.
About 95,000 ballots cast in the nationally watched Texas Senate District 9 runoff election were verified with a hand-counted audit by bipartisan volunteers and the Tarrant County Elections Office.
No errors were found during the audit except those caused by workers during the manual counting, participants said. The review came as local Republicans table their recent push to hand-count ballots in future elections.
County elections administrator Clint Ludwig requested that all ballots cast in person during the Jan. 31 runoff — instead of the fraction mandated by state law — be hand-counted to verify the election’s integrity, according to a letter he wrote to the Texas Secretary of State dated Feb. 5.
[…]
Leaders in Tarrant County’s Republican and Democratic parties both applauded the accuracy of the election results after the audit was completed. However, some within the Democratic party, as well as nonpartisan observers, questioned whether the audit was necessary or warranted the expense of paying ballot counters.
The decision to expand the audit sets a “precedent that we shouldn’t have,” said Janet Mattern, president of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Tarrant County, a nonprofit devoted to increasing civic engagement and voter education.
“I’m very concerned that this may happen again, and I’m very concerned that they’re not considering the taxpayer dollars, how expensive this is for an activity that they proved was not necessary,” Mattern said. “What other kind of unnecessary work are they doing and causing us to pay more taxes on?”
The expanded audit required at least 50 paid workers from the Democratic and Republican parties to complete, said Kat Cano, a lead Democratic ballot board judge who co-led the audit. Ludwig and county officials did not respond to questions on how much the effort cost.
Elections workers identified no errors from the voting machines but introduced and caught several “human miscounts” during the hand-counting process, Cano explained.
“The machines are very accurate. And when we were trying to prove the accuracy of the machines, the problem you run into is that humans are inaccurate,” Cano said. “So you have to go back and redo your work a lot of the time.”
You can see a copy of the letter sent to the SOS in the story. So, this just tells us again that the computers are a lot better at counting votes than the people are. Good luck convincing the flat-earthers about that. Also, Taylor Rehmet is now officially State Sen. Taylor Rehmet, as he was sworn in yesterday. Congratulations!
And finally, Republicans are getting nervous in Bexar County, while Dems are trying not to screw up their potential opportunities.
The Democrats only need to net three seats to flip the U.S. House this year.
But given the lack of prospects across the national landscape, the Democratic Party is now also scrambling to ensure its primaries produce candidates who can take advantage of a favorable environment.
In Texas’ 21st Congressional District, local Democrats want to see their party renominate their 2024 candidate, Kristin Hook, a former scientist for the National Institutes of Health who worked for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and moved to San Antonio during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Hook is in a three-way primary with a candidate from Bandera, VA trauma therapist Regina Vanburg, who other Democrats believe has more ability to connect with the district’s Hill Country territory.
“I think if this was going to be as simple as who has political experience, that would have already worked,” Vanburg said in an interview after the TX21 forum. “The incredible position that our nation is in right now is based largely on people’s feelings about things… [so] I can see how my skillset is exactly what is needed.”
In TX23, Democrats recruited a candidate with national fundraising experience in [Katy] Padilla Stout, who they hope could take advantage of a good year for their party and a damaging GOP primary.
“Congressional District 23, I think, has a real opportunity for Democrats,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder said on a call with reporters after the special election victory. “We are leaving no stone unturned in this election.”
But Padilla Stout now faces a four-way primary with candidates from all across the district, including 2024 contender Santos Limon, who recently picked up the backing of the North East Bexar County Democrats.
Perhaps the biggest opportunity this cycle, Texas Democrats say, is now shaping up on San Antonio’s South Side, where a lack of early enthusiasm about the district now has party leaders spending money to boost one of four primary contenders they think has the best shot in November.
Last summer the largest super PAC helping Democrats in Texas produced an analysis that said the new TX35 likely wasn’t winnable this cycle, and despite a county full of elected Democrats, no big-name candidates put themselves up for the job, including Sheriff Javier Salazar and Beto Altamirano, who were considered top recruits.
On the Feb. 3 call, however, the PAC’s Executive Director Katherine Fischer said TX35 is “more flippable” than she initially thought, given the evidence she’s seen about Hispanic voters turning away from the party.
Now that Democrats believe the race is in play, they’re hanging their hopes on Salazar’s public information officer Johnny Garcia, whose old-school Democratic values they say match a tough district but whose law enforcement background has been a challenge to sell in a Democratic primary with three other candidates.
A PAC aligned with the Blue Dogs Coalition in Congress is putting $300,000 behind Garcia, while several local Democratic groups, including the NEBCD, have put their support behind another candidate, U.S. Marine Corps veteran John Lira, who worked in the Biden Administration and ran against Gonzales in 2022, when his home was still in TX23.
In a nod to the gap between national and local leaders in these races, former San Antonio City Councilman John Courage (D9) led the effort to endorse Lira — stressing loyalty to those who’ve been on the ground with the party through tough times.
“I think many of us met John when he started running a few years ago, and he’s stuck with us,” Courage said. “He’s not the kind of candidate who shows up at election time, and I think that’s important.”
I’ve been saying all along that CD35 is winnable based on the 2018 numbers, which I think more people are now thinking is the likelier scenario than the 2024 numbers. I don’t have any dogs in these fights, I just want everyone to get fully behind whoever the eventual nominees are. Let’s make every race count.
I know multiple Trump voters who voted in the Dem primary. Some just to disrupt, others with the intent to select the “lesser of two evils” amongst the Democrats, knowing full well they would likely win in Harris County. The system seems broken and the primary turnout numbers aren’t as telling as one might think
I’m down in Tx 35 tonight in Guadalupe County, and it is pretty ugly at the candidate rally here. Two of Garcia’s opponents are directly going after him pretty hard, and not only about his law enforcement background.