Texas Early Voting - Updated

Tradition has it in Texas that a small or mediocre voter turnout favors the Republican Party, while a large turnout favors the Democratic Party. The first few days of early voting here was at record-breaking levels. The Secretary of State has now released figures for the first seven days of early voting, and it looks like the huge turnout is continuing.

After seven days of early voting in the 15 largest Texas counties, 1,772,441 people have voted. That is 20.95% of all registered voters in those counties. Back in the 2004 general election after seven days of voting, 1,086,745 people had voted. That was 13.36% of the counties' registered voters. That's a very significant jump in early voters (63%).

The total for all early voting and absentee voting for 2004 was 2,412,952, or 29.66% of the total registered voters. Including election day voters, 56.57% of all registered voters voted in 2004.

If the 63% jump in voters holds all the way thru early voting, then this year's total number of early and absentee voters would be 3,933,112 (46.49%) for the 15 counties. It should be interesting to see if the early vote actually reaches this lofty level by the time it ends this week.

If it even gets close, this year's total vote could climb from 2004's 56% to 70% or 80% for 2008. That would be very good for Texas Democrats.

Here are the totals for the largest 15 counties after seven days:

Harris.................359,613(18.53%)
Dallas..................256,683(21.25%)
Tarrant..............221,216(23.06%)
Bexar..................206,194(22.47%)
Travis.................154,988(25.44%)
Collin...................107,382(25.29%)
El Paso..................57,433(14.78%)
Denton..................78,598(21.92%)
Hidalgo.................42,776(14.02%)
Fort Bend.............81,975(27.42%)
Montgomery........53,151(21.97%)
Williamson............55,294(23.84%)
Nueces..................33,734(16.96%)
Galveston.............40,797(21.58%)
Cameron...............19,637(11.27%)