More than a million Texans have already cast ballots after just the first day of early voting.
And the state isn’t even finished counting the first day’s numbers.
Record breaking early voting, combined with unusually high mail-in ballot returns show Texas has already surpassed 1 million votes with still three more weeks of voting come.
Harris County by far had the biggest turnout on the first day, with almost 170,000 ballots cast in-person or through mail-in voting as of Wednesday morning. In 2016, Harris County had just under 130,000 ballots submitted on the first day.
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Dallas County was next with almost 60,000 in-person votes cast on the first day, with at least another 30,000 votes now in from mail-in voting.
Bexar County recorded just over 33,000 votes cast in-person on the first day of early voting and has already seen more than 45,000 mail-in ballots come in. The 78,000 votes are way ahead of the 52,000 combined mail and in-person voting during the first day of early voting in 2016.
El Paso County saw one of the biggest jumps in the state with almost 34,000 votes already in through early voting and mail-in balloting. The county reported just over 19,000 combined in 2016 on the first day of voting.
You can track early voting numbers around the state here, though please note that as of late yesterday afternoon, there were still a lot that were missing or incomplete. I’ll take more of a look at this later, when things have stabilized a bit.
Also of note:
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To amplify the extraordinariness of this – Harris County day 1 in-person early vote in:*2008: 39,201
*2012: 47,093
*2016: 67,471
*2018: 63,188#txlege #Election2020
— Michael Li 李之樸 (@mcpli) 7:48 PM – 13 October 2020
I covered these Day One numbers yesterday, and while it doesn’t make sense to do daily comparisons because of the longer early voting period, and because EV started on a Tuesday this year, we can see how Day Two has gone:
Year Day One Day Two
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2008 39,201 43,411
2012 47,093 51,578
2016 64,471 73,542
2018 63,188 64,781
2020 128,186 118,008
The Day Two daily EV totals are here. You can find the daily totals for 2008 and 2012 (and 2016 as well, but I’ve got a separate link for it) here, for 2016 here, and for 2018 here.
If you were wondering how Day Two of 2020 could possibly compare to Day One, well, that total for all of Day Two in 2016 was exceeded by 4PM, so folks still very much have the urge. This year is the first year where Day Two was a decline from Day One, but considering that both days are higher than any previous EV day, I think we can accept it. Oh, and two days in we’re basically at ten percent turnout.
By the way, there were 114,996 in person votes and 3,012 mail votes, so we’re at 44,349 mail ballots overall. I feel confident we will easily reach 2018 mail levels, and should at least approach 2016. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the week brings for in person voting, too. Have you voted yet?
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