Texas Politics & Government: Ideas and Institutions

During the months of January and February, I contacted voters on several streets in my immediate neighborhood in an attempt to increase voter turnout in the Democratic Party's primary election. My precinct chair gave me a large list of targets, asking me to complete the list before the date for the start of early voting (February 18, 2020). My first contacts were on the street on which I live. I know all of the neighbors on my street, talk with them frequently throughout the year, and they are all willing to listen to me when I approach them about political activities. I was not attempting to convince them to vote for a particular candidate; my goal was to increase participation in the Democratic primary. These are the results for the 68 registered voters on my street. Thirty-four voted in the Democratic primary, three voted in the Republican primary. The voter turnout rate for the Democratic primary was 50 percent. Furthermore, 88 percent of the voters participated in the Demo...

With the completion of early voting the Texas primary elections, we can get some idea of what voter turnout will be after Election Day on Tuesday, March 3, 2020. The Republican primary garnered, as usual, more voters than the Democratic primary, although one might have thought that with no real contest in the nomination of a presidential candidate in the Republican primary and a plethora of candidates in the Democratic contest to secure the presidential nomination, there would be higher participation rates in the Democratic primary. So what were the levels of participation during early voting? In the Republican primary, 1,085,144 voters participated, which constitutes 6.69 percent of Texas' registered voters. In the Democratic primary, 1,000,288 voters participated, which is 6.17 percent of Texas' 16,211,198 registered voters. How does this translate into a total participation rate for each political party? In most Texas elections, the early vote constitutes about 60 percen...