First of all, none of this would be possible without lots of hard work from lots of people. PLEASE click on the links and donate time or money, if you are able. The national party has written us off down here for ages, so what these people have done is remarkable. My hat is off to them.
Battleground Texas
Texas Democratic Party
Hillary for Texas
Drive for Democracy (to drive voters to the polls)
ALL the local Democratic organizations — there are too many to count, or include all of them here. We also have some amazing Kossacks involved: LibbyShaw, txjackalope (who gave me the original idea and push for this series — it wouldn’t be here without you!), txdoubledd (you have added fantastic links), MargaretPOA, ChrisLove and the Houston Kossacks who kept me going, Ken in TX and his fantastic work out in Travis County, tiredntexas for her hard work in Harris County, oldhippiedude, oceanview for the constant (needed) reminders to make the donation and volunteer links more visible and everyone else out there who’s helped me build these diaries, links and worked to make this happen. FaithChatham has a wonderful series on congressional races that could be competitive — with donation links, if you have some spare change to share.
If you’re a TX voter, VOTE! Here is a FAQ list for you...early voting ENDS on Friday, 4 Nov, but is open on both Sat and Sun (limited hours Sun). Vote early! Even voting early, some counties are seeing lines up to an hour or two, depending on when you go. Then, if you have time take others to the polls. Voting and enthusiasm are contagious. There are free rides in Austin, courtesy of League of Women Voters, plus the Metro is doing free rides in Austin and Houston (for Houston, this is only certain EV days and election day). The YMCA may offer free childcare on election day.
Now, on to data, analysis and caveats. The Texas Secretary of State office has excellent record-keeping...though the numbers seem to be updated later and later.
|
2008 |
2012 |
2016 |
Day 5, top 15 counties by population
Harris (Houston) |
49,417 |
58,312 |
81,239 |
Dallas |
34,801 |
33,602 |
44,160 |
Tarrant (fort worth) |
30,839 |
34,212 |
41,594 |
Bexar (san Antonio) |
29,760 |
28,514 |
38,862 |
Travis (Austin) |
22,655 |
18,777 |
33,263 |
Collin (DFW) |
17,305 |
18,926 |
28,017 |
Denton |
8,445 |
14,469 |
20,506 |
El paso |
8,074 |
8,514 |
|
ft bend (sw Houston) |
13,009 |
14,642 |
|
hidalgo (rio grande) |
6,116 |
8,647 |
|
Montgomery (n Houston) |
7,912 |
10,838 |
|
Williamson (round rock) |
9,205 |
9,235 |
15,010 |
Galveston |
6,092 |
7,674 |
|
Nueces |
4,945 |
5,006 |
|
Cameron (Rio grande) |
3,282 |
3,879 |
|
TOTAl EV today |
251,857 |
275,247 |
302,651* |
Cumulative Ev |
1,226,290 |
1,302,073 |
1,856,506* |
total votes (ev & mail in) |
1,374,279 |
1,472,595 |
2,083,557*
|
*All totals for today are based on the counties I have information on ONLY: which means it’s based on numbers for 8 counties, and 0’s for the other 7. THIS NUMBER WILL GO UP. My best guess based on what I’ve got everywhere else, it will go up by roughly another 100K-150K votes. I’ll keep checking the SoS website today, and do a major update if they ever post. There is the possibility I won’t get anything from the SoS website until Monday — I don’t know if they’re working over the weekend. Since we’re still getting numbers from the major counties, I’ll plan on a Sunday diary covering today’s early vote.
Current sources
Harris County
Dallas County
Tarrant County
Bexar County
Travis County
Collin County
*New: Denton County from comments
Williamson County
Now for analysis: limited due to lack of data. From what we can see, the numbers are staying steady...as in, 50% or so more early voters than 2012. The Texas Tribune has a nice set of graphs and pictures for all of this data. On Day 4, we had total votes in the bank of 1.8M...compared to 2012’s 1.2M and 2008’s 1.1M. This is big, and real. It’s also showing itself to be a sustained change...which means we COULD see the same increase all the way through. To give an idea of what that would mean, in 2012, there were a total of 8M votes cast (out of 13.6M voters): 3.5M were early votes. If we can keep up the turnout, then this year, we’ll have a total of (roughly) 5.25M early votes, and 12M total votes. Is that likely? Hard to say. Txjackalope says probably not: and he may be right. That would be an amazing 79% turnout of registered voters. On the other hand...people are excited and involved in a way we haven’t seen for a presidential election, and it’s not because of Trump’s charm!
What counties are GOP/Dem? Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Travis, El Paso, Cameron, Hidalgo, Nueces are blue. Montgomery, Collin, Williamson and Denton have historically been red. (h/t Permanent Republican Minority for the list) Ft Bend has seen massive growth and become one of the most diverse counties in the state — so not sure where it will go. How much of that is due to demographics, how much is due to ideology, how much is due to who has traditionally voted: hard to say. In addition, most moderate GOP in TX (ok, the Bushes and tons of newspapers) have announced for Clinton, which may start peeling off the suburban GOP vote in favor of Team Blue. There are 254 counties in Texas, and 15 million registered voters. In these 15 counties live 9.7 million of those voters: almost 2/3 of all possible TX voters. Txjackalope has a great diary about what all this means as of yesterday here. For those who like color charts and demographic data, Texdude50 has everything you need over here.
Does this automatically mean good things for Clinton? Yesterday, I pointed out that the end of Thursday (Day 4), we equaled the total number of votes it took until Saturday (Day 6) to accumulate in 2012. TX doesn’t have party affiliation, so it’s hard to say. However, the demographics that have historically low turnout here in TX are the same as everywhere else: Latino, young, other minorities. There’s not necessarily much room for the GOP vote to grow from previous years...and that’s NOT the case for the Dem vote. The one to watch is likely to be Tarrant County, as we get to election night — historically, Tarrant reflects the overall vote percentages of the state. To play devil’s advocate, though, that’s with ‘normal’ voter demographics.
I’m not going into all the detailed vote information, but for those who do better with county running totals: for Bexar County, 514,000 voted in 2012: 348,326 were early voters. As of yesterday, 192,499 have voted early: we’ve got a full 7 days of early voting left (though Sunday has short hours), and Bexar’s already at 55% of 2012’s early vote. The same is true for Harris County: 374,679 early votes to date compared to 2012’s total of 700,236 (53% 2012 totals). However, it’s also true of the redder counties: Tarrant is at 55% of 2012’s early vote total. Once again, this shows how high turnout is this election: in 5 days of early voting, we’ve passed the halfway point by a fair bit. In 2012, there was a huge spike on the last day of early voting — we’ll have to see if that holds true again.
Once again, there is NO way to guarantee that ‘blue’ counties are seeing more Dem votes, and ‘red’ counties are going to keep seeing more GOP votes: if this is a true increase in total voters, then historical data MAY wind up being way off.
What’s different? President H.W. Bush endorsed the Democrat. So did all of the major TX papers...several for the first time in history. Oh, and Battleground Texas has been making a real push for years to register more voters...especially latino. And the Dem VP nominee...who speaks Spanish...came down for campaign events. And the Dem campaign has actually spent on ads for the first time in memory. On top of that, the GOP nominee is scum, who is starting to lose college age white women (a reliable suburban demographic) So...my guess is, this isn’t increased GOP turnout. We may be seeing a TX too close to call on 8 Nov, and pundits in shock...and a Republican party with no path to the White House for generations.
For those who want the whole history…
Day 1 (txjackalope)
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4