Turnout projections for this election, originally at 25%, are being revised downward as polling places report slow going.
Richard Murray, political science professor at the University of Houston, said the 25 percent turnout estimate may be optimistic. At midday, he lowered his expectation to 20 percent.
“It’s surprising to me that it’s so low,” he said. “Disheartening? Not to me personally. When the electorate shrinks, you get people who know more about the issues and about individual candidates in particular. It reduces somewhat the behavior that’s generated by TV ads. I don’t think its going to have any devastating effects.”
I suppose there could still be a rush of folks on the way home from work – I just got two emails from the Parker campaign with the subject line “ALERT: Polls Close in Less Than 2 Hours!”, so the candidates are certainly still working it. But don’t be surprised if fewer than 200,000 votes total are cast in the city. I don’t know who that benefits and who it hurts, but it does suggest to me that there may not be much drop in participation from this election to the runoff. Expect to get a lot of contact from the surviving campaigns if you did your civic duty this time around.
As a reminder, tune in to KHOU this evening after 7 PM to see me play a pundit on television. I’ll be posting updates here as well from the studio.