From Forbes: “As of Oct. 29, NBC News has analyzed Texas’ early and by mail voting through Oct. 26, finding that 54% of those voting early are Republican vs. 36% Democrat and 10% other or unknown. This gives the Republicans up to an 18% lead in early voting in Texas, or 8% if all the unknown and first-time voters are assigned to the Democrats.
”While Texas doesn’t have party registration, NBC News used commercial databases to infer partisan turnout. Texans’ primary voting history is commercially available, providing a strong indicator of party affiliation.
“...If Texas voters adhere to their party affiliations, the early voting there could indicate that President Trump is on track to meet or exceed his 9 point win over Hillary Clinton in 2016, meaning the polls are understating support for Trump by an average of about 7%. If that does end up being the case, it could mean two things: political polling has gotten worse since 2016; and Texas isn’t turning blue anytime soon.”
The article makes for sobering reading. My guess is that both Democrats and Republicans are coming out, including a lot of Republicans who stayed home in 2016 and 2018. The Trump campaign has heavily invested in the ground game, maybe it’s working in Texas.
But this is no reason to be glum. There are still many local races to be won and increased Dem turnout could be pivotal. It could be that the GOP is running up the numbers in deep red areas, while Democrats are turning urban locales more purple, or even blue. We’ll see. The thing to watch for is how much Biden/the Democratic Party are going to invest in the state after Friday (10/30/2020).
UPDATE: Many people are citing that the author of the piece is Republican, so automatically, it can’t be considered valid. But the key part of the article is from NBC News. It is NBC News is saying that these early voters are Republican. Of note is that Ari Melber of MSNBC has cited this on his show. Of course other people have their own interpretations, but don’t dismiss this one based on the authorship of the article.
For the info from NBC News, go here: www.nbcnews.com/…
Once there, go to the portion of the page titled “Mail-in and early in-person ballots returned.” Click on the button that says “Party registration.” The party registration info is based on estimates by the data vendor TargetSmart.