Here’s the spreadsheet. Basically, three near-identical days for in person voting. At this rate, about 75,000 ballots will be cast before Election Day. I think it will be higher than that, but I don’t think by much.
For comparison, here’s Bradley Olson’s spreadsheet with the daily EV totals from the 2003 runoff, which doesn’t quite compare since there were two full weeks of early voting then, and here’s a spreadsheet from the County Clerk’s office that shows the three-day totals from each of the locations that are in each election. Early voting is up across the board from the November election, which may portend an increase in turnout, or it may just be a reflection of the compressed schedule and reduction in locations. I’ll be looking to see if there’s a sharp increase in the last two days of early voting, when the hours are extended, as is usually the case when there’s five such fuller days. What do you think?
The first time there were four candidates. This time there are only two. The question of course is who is getting the votes of those who voted for Peter Brown or Roy Morales. And no pollster is going to be able to predict that. The question is how much of an impact the early voters and the absentee voters will have on the final results. Most expect the next week will be extremely nasty and we may see more voters than expected going to the polls just to vote against a candidate rather than for a candidate. As for the divisiveness of the campaign, it just reflect the divisiveness of the city itself which the new mayor will have to contend with. They will come into office with probably half the city not liking them or wanting to support anything they propose as mayor to address some very severe problems we face particularly with the budget shortfalls which are there and cannot be dealt with by continuing to borrow money. Which both Gene Locke and Annise Parker probably will be prone to do because it’s easier than raising taxes or cutting services.
This is probably an election where everyone loses. Including the winner.