Still the only voter ID anyone should need
The Texas voter rolls have grown to 15.6 million people, a new record, Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos confirmed.
That is nearly a 400,000-person increase since March and a jump of 1.6 million since the last time Texas held a midterm election in 2014, according to election records.
And there is still time for more voters to join the rolls before Oct. 9, the final day to register in time to vote in the midterm elections.
[…]
Registering to vote and casting a ballot are two different things in Texas. Despite having 14 million registered voters in 2014, just 4.7 million people voted — about 34 percent of voters. In presidential cycles, voter turnout is much higher, hitting almost 60 percent in 2016 and 2012.
Here’s a convenient table that was included in the story to illustrate the progression of the voter rolls:
Voter Registration in Texas For Midterm elections over last 20 years
2018 - 15.6 million
2014 - 14.0 million
2010 - 13.2 million
2006 - 13.1 million
2002 - 12.6 million
1998 - 11.5 million
So there’s been more people registered to vote in the last four years than there were in the twelve years before that combined. There has been a comprehensive effort among various groups to increase Texas’ voter numbers – registering voters was in fact one of the few things that Battleground Texas did well in the 2014 cycle – so it’s good to see that pay off. Harris County by itself can account for nearly 250K of those new registrations since 2014. There’s definitely been a big focus on registering people in this cycle, which should not come as a surprise to anyone who has not been in a cryogenic state.
As noted, registering and voting are two different things. That said, even if the turnout rate remained at 34 percent as it was in 2014, that would translate to 5.3 million ballots cast, modulo however many more people get signed up before the 9th. For what it’s worth, I investigated the question of new voters voting in Harris County in 2014. As I recall (I can’t find the post I wrote about it right now), something like 21% of the brand-new voters turned out in 2014. That’s not great, but it’s not nothing, either. Twenty-one percent turnout of those 1.6 million new voters statewide would still push the 2014 total to just over five million. In 2016, turnout as a percentage of registered voters in Harris County was down compared to 2008 and 2012, but the total number of actual voters was up 130K over 2012, precisely because there were so many (300K in all) more voters. One way or another, expect 2018 turnout to exceed 2014. The real question is who those voters will be.
Has to be making the Republican Party anxious.
For all Good Americans make sure you vote and take a friend with you.
Don’t let the Russian loving Republicans ruin this country and this great state.
Other things like this, from Nate Silvers:
“I was pretty sure that once we introduced non-polling factors into the model — what we call the “fundamentals” — they’d shift our forecast toward Cruz, just as they did for Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate in Tennessee. That’s not what happened, however. Instead, although Cruz is narrowly ahead in the polls right now, the fundamentals slightly helped O’Rourke. Our model thinks that Texas “should” be a competitive race and believes the close polling there is no fluke.” https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-why-our-model-thinks-beto-orourke-really-has-a-chance-in-texas/
Won’t use anymore links as it is early and the comment may not post.