Texas Politics & Government: Ideas and Institutions

After Wednesday's early voting, the trend is even more similar to 2010 in total votes cast. 2014 totals are 7,770 less than 2010. The chart and graph/table tell the story.

Day 9 produced an increase in early voting in the 15 most populous counties in Texas. As a result, the cumulative total (IP & VBM) early vote now exceeds the cumulative vote in 2010 by 15,888 votes. Vote by Mail (VBM) early vote is now 61.8 percent more than in 2010; however, In-person early vote is 12.35 percent less than in 2010. The percentage of registered voters who have voted early is 5.81 percent less than in 2010. The graph and tables show the results through day 9 of early voting.  

The day eight of early voting in Texas for the SOS counties are depicted in the chart and graph/table below: Normally, early voting during the second week favors Democrats. So, the expectation among Democrats was that early voting would increase significantly during this week. However, total early votes (IP + VBM) are down from 2010, and as a percentage of registered voters, the decrease is 7.16 percent. The question remains: Who voted early?

With the first seven days of early voting completed, here are the results for the 15 most populous counties. The results in terms of numbers look a lot like 2010. The number of early votes is up by 36,148. However, the percentage of registered voters who have voted is down by 3.14 percent because of the increase in registered voters. The real question is not how many people voted but who among the registered voters voted. That answer won't come for most of us until November 4th.

John Sides had an interesting post concerning the importance of turnout in the 2014 election for Democrats. The post concerned Sasha Issenberg’s article in the New Republic entitled “How the Democrats Can Avoid Going Down This November” and responses to the article. Here are the key paragraphs from Sides’ post: So here is where I come down in this debate.  No one disagrees that “turnout matters,” and of course Democrats should work hard at turning out Democratic voters in 2014.  This is what made Issenberg’s piece and Bonier’s analysis so interesting. The question is how much turnout matters.  My sense is that commentators still put too much emphasis on it.  That is, there is not enough grappling with what changes in the electorate do not explain — such as, perhaps, the majority of Republican seat gains in 2010.  There is not enough grappling with how Democrats did so well in 2006 despite a midterm electorate, as political scientist Michael...

After six days of early voting, the trend that was evident by Day 3 continues: Voting by Mail (VBM) is up by 68.39 percent, and In-person Voting (IP) is down by 4.25 percent. Overall, the number of early votes cast has increased by 42,375 (5.33 percent), but as a percentage of registered voters (8,978,313) is down by 2.10 percent in the 15 most populous counties. The table and chart/table below depict the comparison with 2010 early voting in the 15 most populous counties:

The cumulative total early vote for day 5 is shown in the chart/table below. Interestingly, the cumulative early vote as a percentage of registered voters has now dropped below the 2010 early voting, 8.17 percent in 2010 versus 8.09 in 2014.

To predict the turnout, I’ll use the numbers available from the Texas Secretary of State for early voting in the 15 most populous counties in Texas. On November 1, 2014, total early votes from those counties should be available.  Using the total number of early votes from those counties, which have historically constituted between 62-68 percent of the total number of statewide early votes in midterm elections, I’ll predict the total early vote.  With the prediction of the total early vote, which in recent mid-term elections has constituted about 53 percent of the total vote, I’ll predict the total vote. Then, I’ll use that number to calculate the percentage of registered voters, which the Texas SOS calculates is 14,025,441, that voted. I expect the percentage to be between 40-42 percent. Return on November 1 st to see the calculations. For now, consider the following charts and tables for early voting in Texas. The data on early voting in the 15...