I’m just going to jump right into the data here. The Day Six daily EV totals are here. You can find the daily totals for 2008 and 2012 (and 2016 as well, but I’ve got a separate link for it) here, for 2016 here, and for 2018 here. I’m going to be experimenting on how to give these numbers going forward, because we’re in such a different world these days:
Vote type Saturday Sunday Total
=====================================
Mail 8,807 8,249 75,504
Drive-thru 7,806 4,135 54,105
In person 57,675 30,361 499,099
Total 74,288 42,745 628,708
Derek Ryan sent out an email that covered the first four days, which you can see here. For the table above, I broke out the drive-through votes from the other in person votes, because why not. And no, I didn’t know that mail ballots were delivered on Sunday, but apparently they are. Looking at the 2016 EV file, that was the same then, too. The more you know…
I’m going to throw some more numbers at you now.
– As of the end of Sunday’s early voting, 25.47% of all Harris County registered voters had turned out. There are, as noted, twelve more days of early voting to go.
– In 2016, total final turnout was 1,338,898. To equal that amount during the early voting period, an additional 710,910 people would need to vote. That’s an average of 59,182.5 per day. I don’t know that it’s necessary to get to this level by the end of early voting, but it would seem that it is well within the range of possibility. I’ll keep track of that as we go.
– In 2016, 76.4% of all mail ballots were returned. As of Sunday, 31.0% of all mail ballots had been returned. There were 123,999 mail ballots sent in 2016, and as of Sunday there had been 243,623 mail ballots sent. Mail ballots are still being sent – the original total was 238,062, and the deadline for requesting a mail ballot is October 23 (i.e., this Friday). If 76% of mail ballots are returned this year, over 185K votes will be cast by mail.
– This week is “normal” for early voting, at least as far as hours go. In Harris County, EV locations will be open 7 AM to 7 PM Monday through Saturday, then 12 PM to 7 PM on Sunday. There are extended EV hours the week after that, but we’ll discuss that later. I’m dying to see what the daily level of voting looks like this week. Have you voted yet?