In case anyone's interested. I've been updating as numbers roll in daily.

http://tinyurl.com/TxEarlyVoteChart

http://tinyurl.com/TxEarlyVote

texd Wrote:In case anyone's interested. I've been updating as numbers roll in daily.

http://tinyurl.com/TxEarlyVoteChart

http://tinyurl.com/TxEarlyVote

I saw one of the local news channels report a % of total votes that have already voted early (and reaching the conclusion that a greater percentage of voters than ever before are voting early). Now this is the second time I'm seeing that figure. What's the denominator? Last year's total votes? If so, it seems like you'd be overstimating the % of early votes, no?

I know the lines have been horrific elsewhere but wow, here in Fort Bend County, they're basically non-existent. I voted a week ago and got there when the polls opened at 10 am. There were all of 12 people. My brother voted Saturday, my wife and her sister voted Sunday and the lines were tiny the whole time. I took my mom to vote on Tuesday at around 12:30 and she was the only person there voting the whole time.

Since we're in the heart of Republican country, I can't imagine that's a good omen for the Republican party.

My percentages are based on registered voters. Final statewide turnout in 2004, btw, was 57%. Final statewide turnout in 2000 was 52%. (ETA: The denominators for my previous election turnout %s are registered voters at the time of those elections, not current registration numbers)

For 2008, we've already had 32% turnout. The daily turnout curve is tracking the 2004 curve perfectly for slope, just with a higher intercept. The question is, does this trend continue through election day, in which case we'll see 10% more in early voting (getting us to 42% early voters) and somewhere in the 80% range for overall turnout, or is this a shift to early voting that will peter out on election day and we'll only see about 10-15% of registered voters actually voting on the 4th, giving us another mid-50s turnout in Texas?

If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably somewhere in the middle. I don't expect to see a turnout in the mid to high 80s, but I do expect that there are more people interested in the race this year than in 2000 and 2004 (despite the fact that those years had a Bush on the ticket), if for no other reason than the fact that Texas was important to the Presidential race for the first time in a long time (due to the contested primary). So I'd guess somewhere in the high 60s to low 70s range.

Fort Bend Owl Wrote:I know the lines have been horrific elsewhere but wow, here in Fort Bend County, they're basically non-existent. I voted a week ago and got there when the polls opened at 10 am. There were all of 12 people. My brother voted Saturday, my wife and her sister voted Sunday and the lines were tiny the whole time. I took my mom to vote on Tuesday at around 12:30 and she was the only person there voting the whole time.

Since we're in the heart of Republican country, I can't imagine that's a good omen for the Republican party.

Fort Bend saw it's biggest numbers to date on Saturday -- not surprising for a community with so many commuters. Everybody saw small numbers on Sunday, and that's a trend. I think most people don't know that polls are open Sunday.

Check out these numbers... this is Saturday and Sunday turnout. Notice how much higher the suburbs were than the central metro counties:

We stand at 37.2% turnout through yesterday. I suspect that once we see today's numbers (mid-afternoon tomorrow) we'll be sitting at 43% turnout in the box before election day.

The raw numbers are clearly up, but one thing I think may be going on with the increased percentages is that these counties may have done some long overdue tightening up of their voter rolls. The 14 largest counties show only a 4 percent increase (300,000) in registered voters from 2004 -- about half the growth of the state population. Dallas shows a 23,000 registered voter DECREASE. To some extent, that might explain some the divergence of Texas turnout to national turnout of registered voters (difference of about 10% -- 2004 67% nationally, 56.7% Texas; 2004 62% nationally, 52% Texas). (A lot of that difference is also that we're not a targeted state -- but that should have been somewhat overcome by the fact that there was a Texan at the top of the ticket in the last two Prez elections).

But the cleaning out of old expired voter registrations can't be everything. There is REAL growth out there in terms of early voter turnout. The real question is to what extent that carries over to Tuesday.

Tex,

I think part of it is people who don't want to wait through what will probably be some pretty long lines on election day. I don't know what it was like for the primaries in Texas, but here in Virginia, participation in the primaries was up by historical standards. If I had an early voting option here in Virginia (I could have lied about a reason to vote absentee), I probably would have taken it, knowing that presidential elections always result in the longest waits anyways. Thank goodness I don't have any down-ballot initiatives or bond referendums to vote on this time - that means people should be able to get in and out pretty quickly, with just 3 tickets (president/vice president, senator, and representative) to vote for. Down-ballot initiatives definitely slows voting down, because many people haven't read up on them before they arrive. (As a former election officer, I "loved" watching this happen.)