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.