More deep dives on primary data

From Levi Asher:

Everyone is talking about the massive early voting numbers in the Texas Democratic primary. Through Day 5, Harris County has already seen 76,555 Democratic ballots cast, more than double where we were at this point in 2024. Saturday alone brought in 15,247 voters, the strongest single Saturday in any recent Democratic primary.

But the raw numbers aren’t the story. The story is who is showing up.

I pulled the voter file and matched every early voter in Harris County against their participation in the last three Democratic primaries. What I found stopped me in my tracks.

47.7% of early voters so far have zero or minimal Democratic primary history. That’s 34,227 people. To be clear about what that means: these aren’t necessarily people who have never voted before. Many of them have voted in general elections. But they have not been showing up to Democratic primaries. About half of the 34,227 voted in one of the last three Democratic primaries. The other half voted in zero. These are voters that most campaigns aren’t targeting, aren’t modeling for, and in many cases don’t have in their voter contact universes at all.

Nearly half the people casting ballots right now are unfamiliar to the Democratic primary electorate.

And the share is growing. On Day 4, surge voters made up 43.6% of the electorate. By Day 5, it was 47.7%. New primary voters aren’t just arriving, they’re arriving faster than the regulars. The electorate is getting more unfamiliar by the day.

I broke down the 34,227 surge voters by demographics. Here’s what stands out:

They are younger. Over 8,500 are under 35 and another 10,000+ are between 35 and 49. This is not an electorate driven by the 65+ base that typically dominates primaries.

They are more Latino. Latino voters make up nearly 29% of the surge compared to their historical share of the primary electorate, a significant jump. White voters still make up the largest share at 36%, followed by Black voters at 30%.

16,489 have never voted in a Democratic primary. Not in 2024. Not in 2022. Not in 2020. These are people entering the Democratic primary process for the first time.

[…]

I want to be clear about what this data tells us and what it doesn’t.

This is a primary surge. The Crockett vs. Talarico race is driving enormous participation in the Democratic primary, and the data makes that undeniable. A competitive race for Senate race is giving voters a reason to pull a Democratic ballot, and the composition of who is showing up is reshaping the electorate in real time.

But this is not necessarily a preview of November. Primary voters and general election voters are different animals. Some of these surge voters may be engaged Democrats who simply never had a reason to vote in a primary before. Others may be independents drawn in by a specific race.

What we do know is this: when the race matters, people show up. And when people show up, the electorate changes. That’s not a small thing. Building a bigger, more diverse primary electorate has downstream consequences that can benefit Democrats in November.

Asher gets more into this on Facebook, and he has a nice dashboard set up that you should sign up for. He’s currently projecting 214K early voters in the Harris County Democratic primary, which is significantly more than the final total in any recent primary. I too have been encouraged by the number of people without much or any past primary voting history participating in this election, but some caution in drawing conclusions from it is warranted. We’ll know a lot more on March 4, and there are further levels to this data to understand.

Here’s Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Allison Campolo:

Okay, my graphs are not nearly as beautiful as many other people’s (thank you @cjtackett for all the work you do bringing us data!). But there’s a thing I want to point out:

The entire state of Texas is seeing a MASSIVE increase in Democratic engagement in the primary that is being sustained day after day. This whole state is ready for major change in a big way, and I want to give major credit to Chair @KendallScudder and the Texas Democratic Party @texasdemocrats for being in the right place at the right time to meet this moment. Y’all are killing it, thank you for all you do.

That said, something really special is happening in Tarrant County, specifically:

We are far and away outpacing the increase in Democratic voter engagement versus the rest of the state. By midday on the 3rd day of early voting we had already achieved the **total** number of early votes in 2026. Now we are just soaring into the stratosphere with our voter engagement day after day.

Tarrant County and Texas often have a very similar level of voter engagement historically – Texas is often at the bottom of the list among the states for voter participation, and Tarrant County is often the urban county with the lowest amount of voter participation in the entire country. So I am acknowledging the fact that it is because we have so much room to grow that gives us the ability to put up these big numbers now. Nonetheless, this year is breaking every mold in every way. I am reasonably certain this is not something any of us saw coming even as hard as we are constantly working.

At the same time, something has happened to Republicans statewide and countywide. They had a very poor showing yesterday even though it is the only Saturday of early voting. No I don’t mind calling this out, I don’t think me posting about it is going to motivate anyone to vote in their primary that wasn’t already going to. But it is VERY strange, I have never seen this before. Will they recover more normal trends next week?

Finally, if you haven’t yet, please head over to Chris Tackett’s substack, he has incredible graphs detailing the change in voter ages (YOUNG PEOPLE ARE VOTING!!!) and the electorate’s prior voting history! 👉 https://christackett.substack.com/p/tarrant-countys-2026-primary-democrats

— Dr. Allison Campolo (@AllisonCampolo) 2:29 PM – 22 February 2026

And as recommended, here’s Chris Tackett:

Look at who’s casting the ballots in the Republican Primary. The picture is stark: 65.2% of GOP primary early voters are 65 or older, with just 1.4% coming from the 18-29 age group. The Republican primary electorate is, quite literally, elder-dominated. The Democratic primary, while also leaning older (39.5% are 65+), shows a much more distributed age profile. 18% are from the 30-44 bracket and 6.8% from younger voters. Democrats aren’t young, but Republicans are genuinely “old”, and that gap has long-term implications.

One narrative you’ll hear is that Democratic enthusiasm numbers are being inflated by Republicans crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. One take has them voting for a certain candidate because they like them, another has them voting for the other candidate because they think they can beat them. Neither plays out in reality, as the vote history data simply doesn’t support that. A full 85% of Republican primary voters have an R-primaries-only history. On the Democratic side, 64% are consistent Democratic primary voters. People with a history of voting only in the opposite party’s primary, well, it’s just about a rounding error, with R’s at around 3%, D’s at 0.7%. There is some combo voting, where people have history in both, but neither are a major piece of the pie. And we aren’t even delving into the Voter Scores here. This is purely voting history and it is pretty clear.

Daily Kos echoed a similar theme. That update is from Saturday, so the numbers may be a bit different now, but after four days of voting over 93% of Tarrant County Republican primary voters were 45 and over, while only about 75% of Tarrant Dem primary voters were in that age range. Again, that may be more a reflection of timing than anything else – check again after voting is over – but it’s something.

Here’s another Derek Ryan report:

Turnout Comparison

-On the Republican side, 529k people have voted. That is 2.8% of all registered voters have voted in the primary. In 2024 at this point, turnout was at 3% (544k votes). In 2022, through Sunday, turnout was at 2.7% (460k votes).

-On the Democratic side, 620k people have voted. That is 3.3% of all registered voters have voted in the primary. The turnout rate of 3.3% is nearly double what it was at this point in 2024 (1.7% turnout rate / 305k votes). Also, in 2024, turnout at the end of early voting was at 3.6%, so with today and four more days to go, the turnout rate has almost surpassed the turnout rate for the entirety of early voting two years ago. This year’s turnout is even higher than it was in 2020 when Texas was in play in the presidential primary race between Biden/Sanders/Bloomberg/et al (3.3% compared to 2.3% in 2020).

Projections

I mentioned that historically around a quarter of all votes have been cast at this point in early voting. The percentage is actually 23% when you average the data for the last three primaries (on both sides). If that holds up this year, we could be looking at 2.3 million people voting in the Republican Primary and 2.7 million people voting in the Democratic Primary.

I will continue to update these numbers and include them when I send out my next report based on what we have seen in previous cycles.

Ryan also talked about the voters with lesser primary histories and also mentioned these same themes. He didn’t have a deeper analysis at this time, but do look at the full reports for the breakdowns.

Here’s a nice statewide vote tracker for both parties from the Chron. Really, the SOS should have something this nice. Other news sites are also reporting on local high turnout activity. So far, Dems statewide are well ahead of their early vote pace for 2022, while Republicans are behind theirs. You can see the effect on a county-by-county basis in one of their provided maps, though that’s by total turnout and not on a party-by-party basis. Still, you know which counties are going to be overwhelmingly Republican and which are not. Do heed Derek Ryan’s previous warning about the current Republican preference for voting on Election Day – once again I say, let’s see what the data is on March 4.

Finally, we all need a useful check on our irrational exuberance. Here’s one of my preferred sources for that:

Dems will likely have a good time in November, but extrapolating from these trends is a total fool’s errand.

— Noah (@NoahMF) 2:02 PM – 22 February 2026

Noted, and thanks. Dems did wind up with higher overall turnout in Harris County in the 2018 primaries, but the point still stands. Lone Star Left has more.

Related Posts:

• A statewide comparison
• A closer look at the EV data so far
• 2026 primary early voting Day Nine: Keep on keeping on