I didn't think the double-the-rate-of-2004 pace for early voting could be maintained all the way through to the end, and the Monday results bear that out, as "only" 62,509 voters showed up at the polls yesterday. That's a slight drop from Saturday's high, and a 48.8% gain over 2004 instead of a 100%+ gain. That's still very much my idea of "not too shabby", however, and if things stay flat it's still another 300,000+ voters, for well over 600,000 early in-person ballots. If there's a growth curve like 2004's, with the bulk of the votes coming on the last two days, we're right back at 800,000 early votes. I'll feel more comfortable making a prediction after I see Tuesday's totals, but that seems like a decent bet right now.

I'm still hearing a lot of confidence from some Democratic number crunchers, some of whom are whispering to Burka, and concern from some others. I can't break that deadlock, but I will make the following comparison of votes cast at EV locations in Democratic State Rep districts to those cast in GOP district locations between 2004 and 2008:

2004


Dem  84,873  43.65%

Rep 104,796  53.89%

Dtn   4,784   2.46%

2008

Dem 178,762  47.45%

Rep 186,976  49.62%

Dtn  11,023   2.93%

As for the Top Fifteen counties statewide, Texas Weekly has a nifty chart showing a comparison between 2004 and 2008. In what should be good news for Democrats, the big urban counties all have strong growth in their turnout. It'd be nice to see more robust increases in places like El Paso, but that's what we've got.