We’re almost there, and NO ONE in the Lone Star State is letting up on the gas. Except, possibly, for the rural areas. I’ve been doing this for an extra week (and loving it), we’ve had other amazing diaries day after day after day hitting the Front Page — and for good reason.
Texas has surpassed its total 2016 vote. Houston, this is anything BUT a problem — as Harris County is one of many who has passed up 2016 and is breaking new records for turnout.
I’ll say it again. TEXAS HAS NOW HAD MORE VOTES, AS OF LAST NIGHT, THAN IN ALL OF 2016’S GENERAL ELECTION. By 30k. And we’ve got today to go...and that’s just for early voting.
We’ve got this.
The Table!
COUNTY |
26 OCT |
27 OCT |
28 Oct |
29 Oct |
COUNTY TOTAL |
RV% |
2016 TOTAL |
2018 TOTAL |
HARRIS |
58,602 |
57,472 |
61,781 |
74,634 |
1,346,420 |
54.28 |
1.312M |
1.208M |
DALLAS* |
29,840 |
30,771 |
32,670 |
40,185 |
744,799 |
53.26 |
759k |
728k |
TARRANT |
34,660 |
33,104 |
33,327 |
39,677 |
680,382 |
56.11 |
669k |
628k |
BEXAR* |
29,508 |
27,349 |
29,130 |
32,548 |
637,687 |
53.62 |
590k |
550k |
TRAVIS |
21,171 |
21,775 |
23,828 |
26,032 |
521,002 |
60.97 |
469k |
484k |
COLLIN* |
15,201 |
14,890 |
15,171 |
18,014 |
423,855 |
65.34 |
361k |
356k |
DENTON |
14,082 |
13,916 |
14,061 |
16,793 |
358,439 |
63.43 |
299k |
296k |
EL PASO* |
8,997 |
5,119 |
8,835 |
10,865 |
203,976 |
41.76 |
214k |
204k |
FT BEND* |
13,577 |
13,068 |
12,996 |
14,236 |
306,256 |
63.49 |
262k |
255k |
HIDALGO |
6,902 |
7,214 |
7,672 |
9,985 |
173,384 |
44.31 |
173k |
152k |
WILLIAMSON |
10,315 |
9,211 |
10,745 |
12,008 |
247,798 |
65.79 |
203k |
208k |
MONTGOMERY |
12,123 |
11,281 |
10,770 |
11,290 |
222,602 |
60.15 |
205k |
190k |
GALVESTON* |
4,971 |
4,499 |
4,550 |
61(??)*** |
124,174 |
?? |
123k |
114k |
BRAZORIA |
5,264 |
4,744 |
4,975 |
5,491 |
131,517 |
58.65 |
121k |
112k |
CAMERON* |
3,593 |
3,522 |
3,568 |
4,556 |
88,878 |
40.6 |
92k |
78k |
TOTALS |
268,806 |
252,935 |
274,079 |
317,375 |
6.21M |
|
5.85M |
5.56M |
*These counties I was having trouble isolating their mail-in votes, so this is just in-person. The totals do account for both, though!
**Sources for these numbers come from a mix of county and state sources. Direct county statistics: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Travis, Denton, El Paso, Ft Bend, Hidalgo, Williamson, Montgomery, Brazoria. From the SoS site only: Dallas, Bexar, Collin, Galveston, Cameron.
***GALVESTON, TX. As of now, the TX SoS site is showing only 61 voters for the county yesterday. That’s simply...unlikely in the extreme, given the county’s been showing daily vote counts in the thousands. I’m leaving it here for now and will update as I get better numbers.
YESTERDAY we were seeing a lot of different numbers for statewide totals: I have 8.53M on my diary (late update), the TX SoS numbers are simply wrong (they dropped again late, I believe due to a data entry error), and the Texas Tribune has a total of 8,646,443 voters as of end of day on 28 Oct. (The link to the Texas Tribune DOES continue to update, so you may see starting numbers for 29 Oct, depending on when you check it)
As a reminder, 2016 saw a total of 8.969M votes, which was right under 60% registered voter participation.
Analysis
As I’ve said the last few days, we’re seeing STRONG turnout among the top 15 counties overall (Dallas County and El Paso County are lagging their 2016 numbers) while the Rest Of Texas has been slower to hit these benchmarks. I’ll admit to not having done a great deal of analysis on the RoT in past, so I don’t know whether it’s normal for those 237 counties to make up numbers on election day or not. Adding in that this is a pandemic, we’re seeing strangeness all over, masks are required to vote, and the active suppression of GOP early and mail-in voting by Trump’s comments, all I can do is shrug and say we simply don’t have a clue. HOWEVER, I much prefer having more votes now than less, so I’ll argue we’re in a great place.
COLLAR COUNTIES: The suburban ‘collars’ around Austin (Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, and now almost Bell), Dallas (specifically Collin and Denton — Tarrant is actually Fort Worth), Houston (Galveston, Brazoria, Ft Bend, Waller, and Montgomery), and San Antonio (esp Guadalupe) have been voting INCREDIBLY well overall. Usually this would be seen as adding to the GOP bank, but between the way those very counties did a blue-shift in 2018 (we gained Williamson, Tarrant, Ft Bend), I’m convinced this is more suburban (and education) rebalancing, continuing the trend we’ve already seen. My belief is that we’ll wind up seeing most of these going blue — and this is where we’re going to see the gains for the State House. Polling for those State House races supports that the voters here are NOT ‘shy’ Trump voters, but people who’ve finally had the last veil of respectability torn from their view of the GOP, or are folks who moved in and were already more liberal.
WHAT’S UP NEXT
Given what we hit for votes today, my current prediction is about 9.6M voters by end of day today — the last of early voting. That puts us right in the ballpark for 12M total TX votes. 12 million. I’d been hoping for 11.5, but I really think we can see it. And there’s no way the GOP can win if 12 million Texans come out and vote.
How to help
GOTV! There are enormous resources available!
Battleground Texas
Join Beto and his Powered by People GOTV effort
ProjectTurnout2020
Sisters United Alliance
Jolt
Focus on the TX State House
Other groups include: Mi Familia Voto; Move Texas; TX Freedom Network; TX Organizing Project; Transexual Educ. Network; Workers Defense Project; Youth Rise TX; Movement Voter Project; Swing Left Texas; Turn Rural TX Blue; and the TX Dem. Party.
And in case you were wondering — Biden and Harris are specifically looking at TX.
Specific Resources
Emergency Ballots are a thing — which for this pandemic is important.
Finally? WE’VE GOT THIS, so long as we keep it up through the stretch! I’ll be doing one more of these on Sat to catch the end of early voting, and then will be watching the TX returns as they come in!