Today was a beautiful day following yesterday’s snow and ice, there were twelve full hours of early voting, and there were a total of 6,072 in-person ballots cast (no mail ballots today), which is almost indistinguishable from the first four days. Here’s the spreadsheet, for your edification. I expect tomorrow to be slow, as the Sunday of early voting usually is, with the last two days being busier than the first four. How busy is the question. So far, there have been 41,389 votes. A total of 62,641 Mayoral ballots were cast early in Round One. Here’s how many early votes you need given different levels of EV proportion to equal the November Mayoral turnout of 178,777 (counting undervotes):
EV % EVs needed To Go ========================= 30 53,633 12,244 35 62,572 21,183 40 71,511 30,122 45 80,450 39,061 50 89,388 47,999
I think 30,000 votes by the end of Tuesday is possible. There were about 26,000 votes cast on the last two days of early voting in November, though that was for all of Harris County; the Houston-only total would have been a bit more than 20,000. Given that I expect forty percent or more of the votes to have been cast by the end of early voting, you can see why I remain pessimistic about the chances of this election’s turnout exceeding that of the November election. We’ll have a much better feel for it on Tuesday night.
It certainly is going to be the proverbial horse race and no one knows whether it will be a landslide for one or a photo-finish for one.
Most expect the majority of Republicans to stay home. They want Annise Parker to win. Hoping it will work to their advantage in 2011. There’s a little message in that. One no one wants to hear.
The rest of the vote will be determined by bias. Either dislike of blacks or dislike of homosexuals. The reality. A sad reality.
Pingback: Runoff EV report, Day 7 – Off the Kuff