Here’s the Daily Record of Early Voting (PDF), which has been updated to reflect Wednesday’s totals on the Harris County Clerk’s webpage. Day Two was similar to Day One, with a tiny dropoff. There were 8903 Democratic in-person votes cast, after 9243 on Tuesday, and 2885 Republican votes, after 2916 on Tuesday. Republicans have returned twice as many absentee ballots (2800 to 1400), but they had requested almost twice as many in the first place (17,500 to 9700). Even with that advantage, Democrats have outvoted Republicans by a 19,578 to 8,654 margin. And as suggested, the two-day in-person Democratic total has basically equalled that for the entire 2004 early vote. One hundred thousand, here we come.
You can follow the early voting day-by-day totals for the 15 most populous counties on the Secretary of State webpage. The Day One Democratic total was over 65,000, compared to 25,000 on the GOP side. In 2004, the GOP had a slight lead on the Democrats after two days. Their turnout is more than double now what it was then, but it’s more than an eight-fold increase on the Dem side.
I have a full roster of who voted on Tuesday and Wednesday, which gives me a lot of data to play with. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get these each day, because I’d like to track the vote in a couple of State House districts. I did that for HD144, which is the seat being vacated by Robert Talton as he runs in the GOP primary for CD22. You might think in a near-60% Republican district that features a three-way race for that State Rep seat and a ten-way contest for CD22 that the Republicans might do better than the Democrats in turnout, but if you did you’d be wrong. Of 764 votes cast by residents of HD144 so far, 479 were in the Democratic primary, and just 285 on the GOP side. That’s 62.7% Democratic. Oh, yeah.
Anyway, I’ll do more of this as I get newer data. Elsewhere, the Star Telegram writes about the huge burst in Democratic turnout in Tarrant County, which you may recall went 62-37 for Bush in 2004, and Karl-T does the math in Travis County. Check it out, and go vote!