News item #1: Texas adds nearly 300,000 more voters in the last two weeks, approaches 17 million voters overall.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
In just two weeks, Texas added more than 284,000 more voters to its rolls just before the registration deadline and now has a record-setting 16.9 million voters heading into the first day of early voting on Tuesday.
That is an increase of 1.8 million voters just since the last presidential election in 2016 — a 12-percent increase in voters.
Nowhere have the gains been greater than along Interstate 35 — a region that has become a blue spine in the heart of an otherwise red state. Of the 1.8 million voters added since 2016, half have come from the 21 counties that stretch from Laredo north into San Antonio, Austin, Waco and the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
The biggest percentage increase has been in Central Texas where Hays, Williamson and Comal counties have all seen their voter registration rolls grow by 24 percent or more. Further north, outside of Dallas, suburban Collin and Denton counties have seen voter rolls grow 19 percent and 21 percent respectively.
[…]
In Bexar County, voter registration has jumped from just over 1 million in 2016 to 1.2 million this year.
“There’s an energy out there,” former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro said on a conference call with former Congressman Beto O’Rourke on Monday. “There’s a hunger for change.”
Just as a point of comparison, at the same 59.39% turnout level that we had in 2016, Texas will see a smidge over ten million voters. Approximately 78% of all voting age Texans are registered, which is where it was in 2016. Note that not all voting age Texans are eligible to vote – we do have a large non-citizen population, after all – so I don’t know offhand what the maximum would be. But we’re likely not that far from it.
New item #2: Record voter turnout expected, as Harris County roll grows by 234K since 2016.
Harris County has added nearly 234,000 voters to its rolls since 2016, despite adding just 143,000 residents during the same period.
As of Monday, the county had a record 2,468,559 registered voters for next month’s presidential election, according to the soon-to-be-final tally by the county voter registrar office.
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has yet to confirm a final tally of registered voters from all 254 counties. The current count stands at 16.9 million, an increase of 12 percent, or 1.8 million, since four years ago. About 28 percent of that increase came in Harris, Bexar and Travis counties.
The growth benefits both major political parties, said Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson, but gives an edge to Democrats, who have a greater number of potential supporters who are unregistered.
Republicans draw a lot of support from Anglo voters, who already are registered and participate at high levels. African American and Latino residents, who historically have faced higher barriers to voting, could be a crucial source of new supporters for Democrats, he said.
“There’s just more room to grow the vote on the Democratic side than the Republican side,” Jillson said.
Young voters who just turned 18, especially Latinos, and naturalized citizens are two pools of voters where Democrats can make gains, University of Houston political science professor Jeronimo Cortina said.
“Democrats have a more diverse pool of people that sympathize with the Democratic Party,” Cortina said. “Part of it is, you have a tremendous pool of eligible potential voters in the state, especially in the urban areas, that four years ago was not tapped.”
Going again by 2016 turnout, which was 61.33%, would put turnout at over 1.51 million in Harris County, easily surpassing the 1.34 million we had in 2016. We would need over 68% turnout to get to 1.7 million, a number that County Clerk Chris Hollins has floated. That’s a bit high for me, but we could get close to 1.6 million if this really is a high-water year for turnout. Remember, the record number of people who voted in 2016 were a lower percentage of registered voters than in 2012 or 2008, but because there were so many more registered voters, the overall total was higher. Turnout as a percentage of registered voters was 62.81% in 2008, and at that level we’d top 1.55 million voters, for an increase of over 200K from 2016.
As we’ve seen so far, turnout numbers have been off the charts. A lot of that is from regular voters, but not all of them. There’s almost two million more voters in Texas than there were in 2016 – it won’t take much from them to have a significant effect, and that’s before we take into account the potential for higher turnout among less-frequent voters. We can’t say too much just yet, but the conditions are there to make the kind of difference Dems have been working towards.
Note that not all voting age Texans are eligible to vote – we do have a large non-citizen population, after all – so I don’t know offhand what the maximum would be. But we’re likely not that far from it.
According to UF Poly Sci Prof Michael McDonald, the VAP is 22,058,260, but the VEP is 18,784,280 (http://www.electproject.org/2020g). So, 16.9 is about 90% of the VEP.
I still advocate for auto-registration though. Voting is our fundamental constitutional right and should be safe, easy, and popular.
After decades of propaganda and voter suppression, with any amount of luck we now have a critical mass of fed up people who haven’t been voting because it just seemed futile to try. Once upon a time Texas was actually a progressive state – one of the first to ratify the ERA, neck and neck with California on consumer protections, our own version of government electrification pre TVA, etc., etc.
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“Turnout as a percentage of registered voters was 62.81% in 2004.”
That should be 2008. 2004 was 58.03%. 2000 was 52.77%.
Mr. Kuffner has mentioned it before, but it’s still remarkable to see McCain’s 26.12% margin over Obama in Absentee ballots in comparison to where we are now. I understand the reasons…and part of it has to do with the…”demographic qualities” of the candidates.
https://harrisvotes.com/HISTORY/110408/Cumulative/cumulative.pdf
Ken – Fixed now. Thanks for the catch.