Here are your final daily early voting totals for the March primaries in Harris County. As is usually the case, the last day was the biggest. Republicans ended up with 75,400 early votes, Democrats with 30,108; that’s about 10,000 more R early votes than in 2010, and about 10,000 fewer D early votes. In 2010, in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, about 60% of the vote occurred on Election Day. If that were to happen this year, Dems would finish with about 75,000 votes, and Rs with about 175,000. If you want to go back to 2006, Republicans split their vote almost evenly between early and Election Day, while Democrats were in no rush to get to the polls, and cast two thirds of their ballots on E-Day. That year, barely 10,000 Dems voted early, and 33,00 voted in total, just more than the number of early voters this year. That’s what a truly slow year looks like. Anyway, it’s plausible to me that Dems may be more inclined to turn out later this year and that Republicans might have emphasized voting early, and if so those projections could move up a bit for Ds and down a bit for Rs. I’ll be surprised if Republicans don’t wind up with double the number of voters, however.
That’s for Harris County, at least. Elsewhere, Democrats are generally exceeding 2010 totals, as are Republicans in many counties. The Secretary of State only has totals for the top 15 through Thursday. If you compare those totals to the final totals for 2010, Democrats have already exceeded the overalls for 2010 in Dallas, Tarrant (by more than double), Travis, Collin, Denton, Williamson, and Cameron, with Bexar falling just short. Overall, Dems had 181,036 early votes through Thursday in these counties, and Republicans had 289,687; the final EV totals in 2010 were 184,694 for D and 306,422 for R. Adding in the Friday totals from just Harris County would make 2014 top the 2010 totals for Ds and would bring the Rs close to their 2010 number, so I think it’s fair to say that early voting was up for both parties overall, and in the end I think the final tallies will be as well. The Republican number to beat is about 1.5 million, and for Dems it’s about 700,000. We’ll see how it goes. Any predictions you’d like to share about totals and outcomes, go right ahead.