2018 Primary Runoff Early Voting

After five days of early voting for the runoff elections in the Democratic and Republican primaries, only 3.22 percent of Texas’ more than 15 million registered voters had cast ballots. The numbers are not impressive. The secretary of state’s office usually provides early voting information on the 15 counties with the largest number of registered voters, but for the runoff, the number of counties was increased to 30. Since the Republican Party had no runoff election for any statewide office, there were only 22 of the 30 counties that held runoff elections for Republicans. However, on the Democratic side, with a runoff in the gubernatorial contest, all 30 counties held Democratic runoffs.

The chart displays the total ballots cast as a percentage of registered voters in the 30 counties. The 11,793, 711 registered voters in the 30 counties account for 77.3 percent of the 15,249,541 registered voters in Texas.

In the Democratic runoff election, 1.19 percent of registered voters cast their ballots in person, and 0.50 percent voted by mail. A total of 219,333 Democrats voted in the runoff in those 30 counties. In the Republican runoff, 0.86 percent of registered voters cast their ballots in person, and 0.67 percent voted by mail. A total of 159,854 Republicans voted in those 30 counties.

Almost 60,000 more Democrats than Republicans voted in the runoffs. However, remember that 8 counties did not hold Republican runoffs; so the comparison is not equivalent. Nevertheless, the fact that so few Texans exercised their right to determine their party’s nominees is appalling.

Who Voted in the 2018 Texas Primaries?

Derek Ryan, Ryan Data in Austin, Texas, provided a report on the voters in Texas’ 2018 primary election. I have copied some of the charts and tables and created an additional chart for commentary.

Source: Ryan Data

Considering who voted in each party’s primary, nearly four-fifths of Republican primary voters were voters who had previously only voted in Republican primary elections. On the other hand, about two-thirds of Democrats were voters who had previously only voted in Democratic primary elections. For Republicans, just over one-tenth of primary voters were first-time primary participants. On the other hand, just over one-fifth of Democratic primary voters were first-time primary participants. Furthermore, only 2.2 percent of historical Democratic primary voters switched to vote in the Republican primary election. Meanwhile, 4.6 percent of historical Republican primary voters switched to vote in the Democratic primary election.

Another table in Ryan’s report indicates that turnout among voters who had participated in all four primary elections between 2010 and 2016 had the highest turnout.

Source: Data from Ryan Data, Chart created by the author

In age, Republican primary voters were concentrated in the older age categories. A majority of Republican primary voters were 60 years old or older. A majority of Democratic primary voters were less than 60 years old. The percentage of voters who were younger than 40 years old among the Democratic primary voters was more than double the percentage of voters who were younger than 40 years old among the Republican primary voters.

Source: Data from Ryan Data, Chart created by the author 

The gender gap is large and significant for the future of partisanship in Texas after 2018.

Source: Ryan Data

In late 2017, Ed Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas, published a six-part series entitled “Flipping Texas in 2018,” in which he identified the two sleeping giants that will produce a new era in partisanship in Texas. The 2018 primary election provides evidence for his predictions.