You know there’s a special election going on for Houston City Council District C, right? It’s in the middle of our stretch of many months with voting of some kind going on. What is a reasonable expectation for how many people might show up for this election?
My go-to answer for a question like that is to look at the similar elections from the past and see what they can tell us. Here’s the turnout data for all of the Houston City Council special elections from this century so far:
Date Race Turnout
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Nov 2025 At Large #1 17.81%
Dec 2025 AL#1 Runoff 3.61%
Jan 2022 District G 6.10%
May 2018 District K 6.01%
May 2009 District H 4.46%
Jun 2009 DistH Runoff 5.01%
May 2007 At Large #3 4.14%
Jun 2007 AL#3 Runoff 2.74%
Five total elections, three of which included runoffs. These numbers are for Harris County only – the At Large and District K races include a piece of Fort Bend, and for At Large a tiny piece of Montgomery, but I’m keeping this simple.
We can toss the November 2025 At Large #1 race as an outlier – it occurred on a regular Election Day, so even though it was the only city race on the ballot, it benefitted from the normalcy of its date and the other regular elections that were also occurring (and also from the much-ballyhooed CD18 special election). The runoff for that race is more in line with the historic norms.
I don’t want to overcomplicate this. District C generally has high turnout, all of the candidates in this race are actively campaigning, and the race is visible to voters, in that I’ve seen mail, online and social media advertising, and even a couple of yard signs. On the other hand, this election is in April, a month in which no one expects to be voting, and we’re all still talking about the primary. Awareness of and engagement with this race is going to be limited.
Based on what we have seen before, I’d say the expected range of outcome is four to six percent turnout. I’d lean towards the high end of that, so let’s put it at about six percent. If it gets to seven or more, I’d call this high turnout, relatively speaking. If it fails to get to five, I’d call it low turnout. Up to you, District C voters.
(Note: There were 813 total ballots cast on Day One, mostly mail ballots.)