If you were seeing the eyepopping turnout numbers in Texas early voting and wondering who they were the answer is in. It’s Democrats.
I pulled four counties to show you all. The table splits voters into 6 categories based on voting in the last four primary elections. So for instance D Primary Voter No R history is people who have voted in at least one Democratic Primary in the last eight years but have not voted in a Republican one. Mixed are based on the last primary they voted in. This data is through the first week of early voting in each of the elections.
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R Primary Voter No D history |
Mixed Primary Last R |
D Primary Voter no R history |
Mixed Primary Last D |
Gen Elec Voter No Primary |
New Voter |
Collin 20 |
30.3% |
0.3% |
24.5% |
3.8% |
28.4% |
12.7% |
Collin 18 |
40.5% |
0.8% |
17.9% |
1.5% |
29.7% |
6.9% |
Collin 16 |
43.3% |
0.6% |
13.7% |
1.2% |
28.5% |
12.7% |
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Williamson 20 |
29.0% |
0.4% |
30.4% |
4.3% |
24.5% |
11.4% |
Williamson 18 |
37.9% |
1.0% |
22.8% |
1.9% |
26.4% |
8.3% |
Williamson 16 |
41.1% |
0.9% |
19.1% |
1.6% |
25.1% |
12.1% |
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Harris 20 |
22.5% |
0.3% |
32.0% |
2.7% |
30.6% |
11.9% |
Harris 18 |
32.3% |
0.7% |
27.2% |
1.4% |
30.0% |
5.5% |
Harris 16 |
31.2% |
0.9% |
24.4% |
0.9% |
30.5% |
12.2% |
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Dallas 20 |
18.4% |
0.5% |
41.2% |
3.9% |
25.5% |
10.6% |
Dallas 18 |
27.0% |
0.8% |
33.7% |
2.0% |
28.0% |
6.5% |
Dallas 16 |
28.5% |
1.1% |
29.9% |
1.2% |
28.1% |
11.2% |
Now you may wonder why these four counties. Dallas is of course the urban core of Dallas and Harris is the urban core of Houston. They are traditionally Democratic strongholds. Harris still did have competitive county wide elections until the rout in 2018(notice how bad it looks for R’s compared to 18).
Williamson and Collin County are northern suburban counties of Austin and Dallas respectively. They are key because they along with a few others are where the entirety of the Republican statewide advantage comes from. Basically the rural vote balances out the urban vote and R’s win by what get’s delivered in those counties.
But Williamson for example got swingy in 2018. Trump won by 10 in 16 but Democrats won the county in the Senate and AG race in 18 but lost in all the others. But go back and look at what it’s done so far in early voting this time around compared to the last two elections. That’s a titanic swing.
Collin was worse. Trump won it by 17% in 2016. The fact that we are just a few percentage points off parity in turnout there is earth shattering.
Coupled with Harris and Dallas our high vote strongholds being up it also bodes well. The last bright spot of good news is the counties with the highest percentages of new voters are the traditional Democratic strongholds in the Rio Grande Valley. Those counties are clocking in at 17% of early vote being brand new voters.
Now the mixed news on this may be Covid. Texas Democrats have historically been heavier on election day voting. That’s why republicans groaned at the President discouraging absentee. It’s normally how they win. The potentially bad news in this is we could just be front loading our vote and our leads will decline as voting continues. However if we can make this behavior permanent it will help us a lot in the future. Our consistent turnout problem is being unable to focus GOTV on a shrinking number of voters as early voting winds through. Training our core voters to go and vote sooner rather than later means phone banking and door knocking resources can get focused on fewer voters. That’s going to be key in winning the close elections in Texas over the next 20 years.
It’s not over. Go vote and then make calls.