Why such a mushy article about the state of early voting so far?
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Because Texas voters can use a single click to back an entire slate, the down-ballot candidates running countywide have ever-slimming chances of influencing their destinies. As polarization and straight-ticket voting grow, the outlook is even more challenging for judicial candidates, who do not like touting their candidacies in a partisan way in the first place.
“It’s a hell of a way to run a railroad,” said District Court Judge Ted Halbach, one of a handful of Republican judges who eked out wins in 2008 and again four years later. “I’ve been the beneficiary and now I face the challenges. But you only can worry about what you can control – and you can’t control very much.”
The 2016 presidential battle, which may go down as the ugliest and most unusual of modern times, could have a profound local impact. Both candidates provoke high negative opinions, which could depress voter turnout or inspire it.
Early vote totals suggest the latter. More than 566,000 ballots were cast in the first week, a record. Lane Lewis, the Democratic Party chairman for Harris County, said the early turnout bolsters his hope for another “wave” election.
“Do I believe Democrats are doing well? Absolutely,” Lewis said. “Five days of voting is not enough to predict an outcome. I wouldn’t say anyone is beating the victory drum.”
Donald Trump’s faithful seem likely to show up en masse, but U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was the big winner in the spring primary, taking 45 percent of the Harris County vote. What will the Cruz supporters do? There is a reasonable possibility that suburban Republican women will cross the party divide and give Hillary Clinton a local win to match what opinion polls are showing in many states. The question is, will they step back to help the down-ticket Republicans?
“This year, nobody knows,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, a 2008 Republican survivor. “Will the turnout be high or low? Will they turn out for Trump or against Trump? Will Hillary get the same kind of enthusiastic turnout Obama did? I don’t see it. But it’s true that we don’t really know.”
The countywide down-ballot races include sheriff, district attorney, county judge, education board, constables and scores of judicial seats. The people seeking them this time cannot decide whether to be confident or scared, Emmett said.
“I was at a candidate meet-and-greet the other day, a bipartisan thing, and in talking to those candidates, to a person they were frantic over who was going to show up and vote,” he said. “Nobody knows.”
“We treat Harris County as a very evenly divided battleground ‘state,'” said Harris County Republican Chairman Paul Simpson. “When I was running (for chairman), that was my constant message. It was a Democratic county, then became Republican, then switched to be very evenly divided. Every cycle is a pitched battle.”
[…]
Political consultant Keir Murray, who works with Democratic candidates, said he is optimistic about the party’s future, though like everyone else he is not so sure about this year.
“The problem is, if you are a Republican office holder, you don’t have a lot of margin for error,” Murray said. “If you get marginally lower turnout from your base voters, you lose. Or, if you see some real uptick in Hispanic voting – and they have not been voting near their rates of registration – that would make a difference. There is evidence that this could happen because Trump has said very negative things about them.”
All due respect, but we do know who is voting, because the County Clerk puts out a roster of everyone who has voted after each day, and we have a pretty good idea of how they are voting. In fact, the Chron wrote about this on Friday, so I have no idea why they switched into this nobody-knows-anything mode. It’s true that the question of who among those that have not yet voted will turn out remains murkier, but the evidence we have so far is that there are still a lot more high-propensity Democrats left to vote, more than the number of high-propensity Republicans. I understand having a story that talks to the people who are on the ballot and who are being affected by what is going on now, but if you’re going to talk about what is happening, the consultant types are in a much better position to give you real information.
Anyway. The Trib has a nice tracker of the changes in early voting turnout for the biggest counties over the past three Presidential races. It’s up everywhere, but the uptick in Travis County in particular is amazing. El Paso is also doing very well, and so far the conventional wisdom is that this is good for Pete Gallego in our one swing Congressional district, CD23. That would have been at least a competitive race without the Trump factor, but maybe this time it will be blue all the way down, and not just in the Congressional race.
I went to bed before the Monday EV report came out, though I saw on Facebook that the number of voters was in the 73,000 range. That’s in line with the daily output from last week, though down a bit from the end of the week. We’ll see if things will slow down or level off, or if the usual pattern will hold and the last two days this week will be heavier. Here’s the Day 7 EV report, which brings you up to date through Sunday. The weekend was even better for Dems than the first five days were, so it’s all about what happens this week. The tracker spreadsheet is here, and I’ll update that when I get the Monday report.
UPDATE: And here are the Day 8 EV totals. It’s down a bit, but still higher than Day One was. The spreadsheet has been updated.