Getting close to the finish line here. Two more days of early voting to go. Here’s the Day Nine report for 2020, and here are the totals from 2012, 2016, and 2018. The totals after Day Four:
Year Mail Early Total
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2012 6,434 19,628 26,062
2016 11,755 42,169 53,924
2018 15,126 43,322 58,448
2020 19,400 66,318 85,718
2012 14,435 40,579 55,014
2016 17,966 63,082 81,048
2018 17,696 38,674 56,370
2020 20,393 55,489 75,882
Some real separation between Dems and Republicans now, and we still haven’t seen a really big day, though as expected Wednesday was bigger than Tuesday. Let’s take another look statewide, courtesy of Derek Ryan:
Yesterday, I made a comment about how we could see large numbers of people show up to vote on the last day of early voting and on Election Day too. I had someone reach out to ask how many people typically vote early versus on Election Day, so I ran some numbers on old versions of the voter file I have from previous election cycles.
In the 2016 Democratic Primary, I show 56.7% people as having voted on Election Day, 4.9% voting by mail, and 38.4% during early voting.
In the 2016 Republican Primary, I show 57.9% people as having voted on Election Day, 2.8% voting by mail, and 39.3% during early voting.
Through yesterday, the Secretary of State reports that through yesterday 656,572 people have voted in the Republican Primary and 536,005 have voted in the Democratic Primary. (These numbers are for all 254 counties.)
He’s referring to the data through Tuesday. You can see that here. I did my own calculation of early-versus-Election Day turnout in Harris County, and it’s consistent with these statewide numbers. Dems are on track for a big number in Harris County, but unless today and tomorrow are huge, and/or Tuesday the 3rd is bigger than expected, we’re on track to fall short of my 500K prediction. Still, past history shows that people do wait till Primary Day, and with South Carolina voting on Saturday, it would not be a surprise if more of them than usual were choosing to wait. It would be a stretch, but Dems can still get to my number. Let’s see what today looks like first.
As a reminder, since the question came up in the comments of Tuesday’s post, I don’t have the running daily totals from 2008, so I can’t do the same comparison for that year. The final EV tally from 2008 was 179,345, and then another 231K showed up on Primary Day. That’s what we’ll need to improve on in order to reach my estimate.