Texas Turnout Report:
2022 General Election - Early Voting Report
It's currently 2:30pm. I was waiting for a few counties to post their lists from yesterday (cough, cough, Galveston County), but they haven't yet. So this is a nearly complete report.
Yesterday. Wow! 720,636 people voted.
Right now we are sitting at 5,459,552 votes cast (30.9% of all registered voters voted).
The breakdown by day is as follows (I separately ballots received by mail before early voting began and put it into its own category called "Day 0."):
Day 0: 172,906
Monday: 457,763
Tuesday: 478,792
Wednesday: 462,660
Thursday: 463,686
Friday: 449,419
Saturday: 328,460
Sunday: 153,622
Monday: 426,309
Tuesday: 396,454
Wednesday: 437,560
Thursday: 511,285
Friday: 720,636
Early Voters by Previous Election History
Voters with previous Republican Primary history now have a 565,429 vote advantage over those with previous Democratic Primary history. As a reminder, participation in a party's primary does not mean the individual votes for that party's candidate in the General Election. However, it is a very good indicator.
While the advantage grew only slightly yesterday (9,687 votes), the Republican Primary voter advantage has grown every single day of early voting, with the exception of Sunday.
When we review all early voters by their previous election history, the breakout is as follows:
Republican Primary voters 40%
Democratic Primary voters 29%
Voters with no primary election history 30%
For the first time during early voting, voters with no previous primary history make up a larger share than those with Democratic Primary history.
The split after early voting ended in previous elections was:
2020: 29% Republican / 24% Democratic / 48% No primary history
2018: 34% Republican / 20% Democratic / 46% No primary history.
2016: 37% Republican / 19% Democratic / 44% No primary history
2014: 40% Republican / 28% Democratic / 33% No primary history
Again, based on this data point alone, the makeup of early voters more closely resembles that from 2014 than it does 2018. (In 2014, John Cornyn was at the top of the ticket and defeated David Alameel 62%-34% and Greg Abbott defeated Wendy Davis 59%-39%.)
Here is how this has tracked each day of early voting.
2022 vs. 2018 Turnout
We can FINALLY compare early voting totals this year to 2018 for the entire state. As I said earlier, 5,459,552 people voted this year. In 2018, 5,994,140 people voted early in the U.S. Senate race. This means we fell short of the 2018 total by 534,588 votes.
However, in 2018, there were 15,793,257 registered voters. 38% of registered voters voted. Currently, there are 17,675,191 registered voters and only 31% voted early. In order to get to a 38% turnout rate, we would have needed 6,716,573 people voting. So adjusted for the growth in the number of registered voters, we are currently 1.3 million votes behind 2018's turnout.
Urban vs. Rural
The Big Five counties (Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Travis, and Tarrant) saw 2,278,492 people vote. They made up 41.7% of all votes cast during early voting. 31% of all registered voters in these counties voted early.
The next 20 largest counties (many of which surround the above-listed counties) saw 1,907,772 people vote. They made up 34.9% of all votes cast. 32.2% of all registered voters in these counties voted early.
The remaining 229 counties saw 1,273,288 people vote. They made up 23.3% of all votes cast. 29.1% of all registered voters in these counties voted early. But, as I have said before, early voting is more popular in urban and suburban areas than it is rural counties. There are fewer early voting places and in a rural county, the drive might be significantly out of the way to reach a polling place. On Election Day, the likelihood is higher that there will be a closer polling place.
Why is it important to look at this breakdown?
In 2020, President Trump received 39.5% of the vote in The Big Five, 51.6% in the next 20 largest counties, but received 74.1% in the remaining 229 counties.
In 2018, Senator Cruz saw a similar breakdown. Cruz received 38.5% of the vote in The Big Five, 51.2% in the next 20 largest counties, and 72.2% in the remaining 229 counties.
Primary Voters
Each party still has over one million voters who voted in their party's primary who have NOT voted. There are 1.5 million voters with previous Republican Primary history and 1.2 million voters with previous Democratic Primary history who have not voted.
59% of voters with Republican Primary history voted early compared to 57% of voters with Democratic Primary history that voted.
In 2018, 21% of voters with Republican Primary history waited to vote on Election Day. If that holds true this year, that would equate to 732,000 votes. 16.7% of voters with Democratic Primary history waited to vote on Election Day. That would equal about 436,000 votes.
It is likely that a larger portion of Republican Primary voters are waiting to vote on Election Day than in years past. The participation rates of 3Rs and 4Rs may point to this being the case. 71.3% of 3Rs have voted and 80.6% of 4Rs have voted. These are group where 90%+ end up voting in midterm elections.
Demographics
These are the updated participation rates by gender, age, and I have added voters with a Hispanic surname to the mix.
The group everyone seems to be focusing on, only 14% of voters aged 18-29 have voted early. In 2018, 34% voted. To reach that rate, an additional 735,721 18-29 year olds will have to vote on Election Day (507,608 voted during early voting).
Projections
Now the question becomes, "How many people are going to vote on Election Day?" And it wasn't 7:20am before Adam Loewy asked me that question (with Evan Smith close behind at 7:40am).
I'm actually not going to make a final projection yet because I need to go through the data a bit more. I'll make a projection in Monday's super duper early voting report.
In the meantime, here is how the early/mail versus Election Day vote has split historically:
2020: 86% of votes were cast by mail or during early voting / 14% on Election Day
2018: 72% mail/early / 28% Election Day
2016: 77% mail/early / 23% Election Day
2014: 55% mail/early / 45% Election Day
The Reports
For the full statewide report, please click here.
For the breakdown by county, please click here.
Last Notes
On Monday afternoon, I will send out a final early voting report. It will include more charts, more data, more everything. Hopefully, that will give you something to look at as we all wait for returns to start rolling in on Tuesday night.
