We are one (short) week in, with what should be the bigger week for turnout coming up:
Year Dem GOP
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2008 66,756 23,851
2012 15,980 36,612
2016 32,233 44,844
For your reference, the 2016 totals are here, and the 2012 totals are here. I don’t have daily EVPA totals from the Harris County Clerk for 2008, so my reference for those numbers is the SOS archive for 2008, with the Day One Dem totals here and the Day One GOP totals here. Day One EV totals for the 15 biggest counties statewide for the first five days (i.e., through Saturday) are here.
One thing to note with the above totals is that for 2008 and 2016, there were six days of early voting through Sunday, as in both years the first Monday was Presidents Day and thus the polls were not open. In 2012, the primary was in May thanks to redistricting-related litigation, so the totals above reflect seven days’ worth of voting. This weekend was pretty brisk – Sunday in particular was up quite a bit from 2012 – with the Dems’ numbers ticking up more than the GOP’s. At this time, the Dems are running 101.7% ahead of 2012, which projects to 154,272 overall, while the Rs are up 22.5% from 2012, or a final tally of 200,875. That would mean Republicans constituted 56.6% of the primary total, and no I’m not going to stop harping on Stan Stanart’s increasingly dumb three-to-one prediction.
As for the week ahead, normally the second week, when polls are open a full twelve hours each day, is the heavier time for early voting. A number of people have expressed the view that some regular voters may have been waiting to see what happened in Nevada and South Carolina before deciding who to vote for. Other than the presumably small contingent of Jeb! fans, I’m not sure how much those results may have changed things, but who knows. Bear in mind also that as heavy as 2008 Democratic primary early voting was, nearly 60% of that vote came on Election Day. That was only in 2008, though – in 2012, more than half of the votes cast in both primaries were early. So take all projections of total turnout with a grain of salt.
One thing that may make this year’s D election day percentage look more like 2008 than 2012 is that the precinct caucuses are once again in play – at least for those of us who remember caucusing then. Neither side (and more to the point, Sanders) has has the ground game here that we saw in 08, though, so my guess is that the EV percentage will be somewhere in between the two.