I mentioned this yesterday, so here it is. I decided to look at the most recent early voting turnout numbers I could find for the counties, and then compare them to the final turnout numbers from the 2022 election. I’ll get into the reasons for that and some notes about the data on the other side, but let’s see the numbers first.
County Dem GOP 2022 D 2022 R
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Bexar 123,730 59,547 50,516 47,167
Brazoria 13,974 18,106 11,480 31,122
Caldwell 1,383 1,332 1,439 3,601
Chambers 650 3,650 637 7,385
Collin 49,176 53,091 36,895 81,141
Comal 4,712 10,497 4,917 24,249
Dallas 149,332 51,778 129,584 88,210
Denton 43,901 47,414 27,516 68,442
El Paso 31,830 11,054 37,624 18,290
Ellis 9,939 13,575 5,496 18,811
Fort Bend 42,865 30,822 41,109 46,480
Galveston 13,219 18,809 11,341 31,309
Guadalupe 5,007 8,049 4,805 20,734
Hays 17,224 7,988 13,154 15,691
Hidalgo 40,077 7,771 43,059 15,306
Johnson 4,371 7,119 2,513 17,263
Kaufman 3,640 4,055 3,079 11,960
Liberty 1,048 5,078 988 8,255
Lubbock 8,786 14,730 5,663 28,014
McLennan 6,829 10,905 6,009 22,809
Medina 1,222 2,024 1,266 7,002
Midland 1,508 4,824 1,531 15,016
Montgomery 15,407 42,614 10,758 72,606
Rockwall 3,674 8,288 2,547 13,561
Tarrant 122,184 91,684 75,125 132,848
Travis 103,309 27,138 109,646 46,679
Waller 1,755 2,340 1,245 4,759
Williamson 38,221 29,229 26,335 48,156
For the most part, the EV data comes from the Day Ten county-by-county data provided by Derek Ryan – here’s the Republican report, here’s the Democratic report. I used this data because I started working on this post on Saturday, and that’s what was available at the time. There are two exceptions, and in both cases I have the final EV data: Bexar County, which I found in a news story that came up as I was googling their elections department, and Tarrant County, which I got from Chris Tackett. You should read his analysis of the Tarrant County data, he has a lot of good details there.
I picked counties that were of interest to me, including suburban and exurban ones around the big urban counties, the big urbans themselves, and a few others. I did this in part because I wanted to see what turnout for both parties looked like in counties where there likely were few to no local Democratic primaries of interest, where the Senate race and all things Trump were almost certainly the big drivers. I did not include Harris County because I’ve already covered this for Harris. I included all of the counties that border Harris instead.
I googled “[insert] County Elections” to get the 2022 data. Ideally, I wanted to get the total number of ballots cast for each primary in each county, because the EV totals we have reflect total ballots cast and not votes in a particular race. That wasn’t always possible. Some counties just didn’t have that data, including Travis County as well as some of the smaller counties. Where I couldn’t find it, I used the Contest Details for the Governor’s race in 2022, which gave county-by-county numbers. But those are votes cast, not ballots cast, so it’s a slight undercount. Similarly, some counties that use the Clarity reporting system only gave total turnout as a combination of the two primaries, so again I went by votes cast in the Governor’s race for that county’s turnout number. The difference is likely to be small, but if you have the actual total-ballots-cast figures, you’ll know they’re not the same.
I did this for two reasons. One was to see what the Democratic energy looked like outside of Harris County. That was easy enough, as in every county here the Democratic vote with two days of voting to go has either already surpassed the final total from 2022 or is trivially close to it. In some cases, the Democratic total is far and away higher than in 2022, with more voting still to come. Look at Bexar and Tarrant (the two counties where I have the final EV totals, not the Thursday EV totals), but also look at Ellis and Johnson and Rockwall and Lubbock. The first three are fairly high-growth suburban/exurban counties that have helped boost GOP margins, and the latter is one of my white whales as the most Republican urban area. Just getting more people to vote in a Democratic primary in places like those should help grow the presence of the local Democratic Party and encourage more Democrats to run for lower offices – school boards, City Council, and so on – which in turn will help build a bench.
One year is far from a trend, and Dems have done fine in years where the primary participation rate was low – 2012 and 2018 come to mind for that. But I’m often reminded of some work former Republican consultant Royal Masset did over the years for the Quorum Report, in which he tracked the rise of the Republican Party in Texas by noting the growth in Republican primary turnout, overall and in some key counties. Fort Bend and Williamson used to be seen as Republican juggernauts, as were Collin and Denton and Tarrant. If we can plant some seeds in the next wave of places that people are moving to, we will be much better off down the line.
The other reason to do this is the flip side of the first reason, to see what is happening to Republicans. It’s important to note that in part to their own big money and high profile Senate race, Republican turnout overall for this primary has been pretty good. Harris County Republicans are doing well, and Bexar County, which also features some slugfests at the Congressional and legislative level, has overperformed from 2022. Some other counties seem to be on track to at least match, if not exceed their 2022 turnout when all the votes are counted. But in some of these counties, you have to wonder what’s going on. In some counties, the two-days-to-go tally is less than half of the 2022 final total. Look at Caldwell, Chambers, Comal, Guadalupe, Johnson, Kaufman, Medina, McLennan, Midland – either they’re all committed to Election Day turnout, or there’s some kind of problem for them to worry about. Republicans have won in the past in part because they have run up the score in counties like these – the cumulative effect of them has more than compensated for the blue shifts in the I-35 corridor and Harris County. As good as the excess of Democratic energy is for us, a lack of energy on the Republican side would be disastrous for them. I’ll be very interested to see what the final totals look like.
So there you have it. What will you be looking for in tomorrow’s results?
Wow, the Democratic numbers are certainly heartening, as is the dismal Republican turn-out in some counties. Y’all be sure to be counted tomorrow!