Over 1 Million Texans Cast Early Ballots, Blue Counties Drive Record Turnout

The first day of early voting in Texas a record number of Texans casted their votes, particularly in Democratic-leaning areas.

According to the Hill, Harris County saw the highest number of votes, with about 125,000. In Travis County, 46,000 people voted on the first day and nearly 47,000 voted in Boxers. The Hill noted that this early voter turnout already broke several records.

Overall, KXAN reported that on monday, 1,006,104 million votes were cast. With more than 18.6 million Texas voters registered to vote, that means that so far 5.4% of all registered voters have already cast their ballot.

So far, fifteen counties have surpassed 10% turnout. Jeff Davis County is leading the turnout in the state at $12.9%, followed by Llano County, at 12.61%

In the 2020 presidential election 66.73% of registered voters in Texas cast their ballots. In comparison, in 2016, only 59.39% voted. It is still too soon to predict how this year turnout will be, as last year the country was still living with COVID-19 restrictions. However, we can expect the early voter turnout to be higher.

The New York Times reported that early voting became more usual thanks to the pandemic, and this year more early voters and voters by mail are expected to cast their ballots.

In addition, overall turnout is expected to be bigger because of population growth and because the percentage of registered voters is also growing. The hill noted that this increase is particularly high in blue-leaning areas. Despite this trend, Texas is not expected to be a competitive state.

High turnout in urban counties is “a necessary condition for [Democrats] to be competitive, but it’s not sufficient,” Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project (TPP) at the University of Texas told The Hill.

So far, polls predict Donald Trump will win the state, and most polls also give Sen. Ted Cruz has a small advantage over his challenger U.S. Rep. Colin Allred.