Yesterday I said that the turnout so far in the 2020 Democratic primary runoff was already historic. Today I’m going to show my work on that. Herewith is the 21st century history of Democratic primary runoff turnout for Harris County:
Year Turnout Top race
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2002 64,643 Senate
2006 12,542 Senate
2008 9,670 RRC
2010 15,225 Judicial
2012 29,912 Senate
2014 18,828 Senate
2016 30,334 RRC
2018 57,590 Governor
2020 72,838 Senate
The only primary runoff on the ballot in 2004 was for Constable in Precinct 7. We’ve come a long way, and please don’t forget that. We had just nudged past that 2002 mark as of yesterday, and now we are putting distance between it and this year. I didn’t include mail ballots in this accounting for two reasons. One, they didn’t quantify mail ballots in 2002, and two, this year is way off the charts compared to years prior. 2018 and 2016 are the only reasonable comps, and they both fall well short, with 19,472 mail ballots in 2018 and 11,433 in 2016. We had each of those beat on Day One.
With that, here’s the chart for this year as of today:
Election Mail Early Total Mail %
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D primary 18,503 54,325 72,828 25.4%
R primary 19,690 47,271 66,961 29.4%
D runoff 38,026 34,812 72,838 52.2%
R runoff 22,351 10,215 32,566 68.6%
The Tuesday runoff EV file is here, and the final EV turnout report from March is here. Second week Tuesday was the first big turnout day for the primary, and where Dems started separating from Republicans overall. This Tuesday was by a small amount the biggest day so far for Dems, though Monday had a slightly higher in person count. This is undoubtedly where the March turnout begins to exceed the July turnout, but this runoff is now officially leaving all previous primary runoffs in the dust.
Interesting that Republicans had more mail votes in the runoff than in the primary. That could spell bad news for Dems, if it means that the Republicans are doing a better job of following up on those ballots.
But the Democrats *should* have a much higher turnout–there are far more races in the Dem ballot. AFAIK most Harris County Republicans only have two races on the ballot–a district judge and Sheriff.
Mamacita – Remember, the County Clerk sent a mail ballot application to every registered voters over the age of 65 for the runoff. I’m sure that juiced the total for both runoffs.
Thank you for the analysis!