I’m just going to cut to the chase here, as there’s only five days of early voting and my next update will be after Day Five. Here are the Day One totals for the May 2026 runoffs:
Party Mail Early Total
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Dem 10,723 8,175 18,898
GOP 6,450 14,448 20,898
That’s more than the Day One EV totals for the March primary, though Dems did it in the runoff on the strength of mail ballots. Republicans had more in person yesterday than they did on Day One in March. Remember that there were eleven days of early voting for March, so the dailies would need to be a lot higher to come anything close to what we saw then, and as I’ve said before I fully no not expect Dems to do nearly as well. Interestingly, the 2022 runoffs had higher Day One turnout for both parties, though for that cycle it was due to much higher mail balloting. Republicans had much higher turnout in the Harris County runoff than Democrats did. Ken Paxton was a key figure in that year’s runoff as well. Go figure.
Anyway. I voted on Monday, it was mostly because that was the day that best fit my schedule. Remember you only have four more days. I’ll report on the final EV totals over the weekend.