Predicting Voter Turnout in Texas in 2016

With Early Voting completed, I am going to predict voter turnout for the presidential contest. I am basing the prediction on the Early Vote total in the 15 SOS counties, making assumptions about the percentages of total Early Votes and then on the total vote. Here are the bases of the calculations:

Based on the fact that the Early Vote in the SOS counties, as a percentage of the total Early Vote has increased in each of the last two presidential elections, I increased the percentage slightly over 2012 to 69.29 percent. That results in a predicted Early Vote total for all 254 counties of 6,490,736 votes cast. I also predict that the total Early Vote will be 64.53 percent of the total vote, which is a percentage that falls between 2008 and 2012. The predicted total vote is 10,058,478, or 66.61 percent of registered voters and 52.1 percent of the voting age population (VAP). How does this prediction compare with voter turnout in previous presidential elections in Texas?

Texas Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections since 1972

Year	Registered	Voted	% RV	VAP	% VAP
1972	5,212,815	3,471,281	66.6	7,731,571	44.9
1976	6,281,149	4,071,884	64.8	8,824,677	46.1
1980	6,639,661	4,541,637	68.4	9,971,392	45.5
1984	7,900,169	5,397,571	68.3	11,352,126	47.5
1988	8,201,856	5,427,410	66.2	12,239,280	44.3
1992	8,439,874	6,154,018	72.9	12,916,937	47.6
1996	10,540,670	5,611,644	53.2	13,698,284	41.0
2000	12,365,235	6,407,637	51.8	14,479,609	44.3
2004	13,098,329	7,410,749	56.6	16,071,153	46.1
2008	13,575,062	8,077,795	59.5	17,735,442	45.6
2012	13,646,226	7,993,851	58.6	18,279,737	43.7
2016	15,100,824	10,077,862	66.61	19,307,355	52.1

Note that voter turnout in Texas between 1972 and 2012 was highest in 1992, when 72.9 percent of registered voters cast ballots (47.6 percent of the voting age population cast ballots). So, 2016 would not be the highest turnout since 1972 in percentage of registered voters, but it would be the highest in percentage of the voting age population.