Early Voting Up Sharply

It is normal for voting totals to drop off in an off-year election (an election without presidential candidates), and that's just what happened in 2006.   Even a four-way race for the governor's office couldn't seem to pull in a large number of voters.   But it looks like 2010 may be different.

I checked the statewide early voting totals for the first three days of voting in Texas, and the number of voters casting their ballots early this year is up sharply over 2006.   It's not due to a larger number of registered voters overall because the number of registered voters is roughly the same for 2006 and 2010. There were 8,134,610 registered voters in 2006, and there are currently 8,339,034 registered voters in Texas.

Here are the totals after the first three days in both 2006 and 2010:

2006
Day 1 in person...............60,166
Day 2 in person...............65,553
Day 3 in person...............57,552
Total in person...............183,271
Mail-in votes...............36,165
Total in person and mail-in...............219,436

2010
Day 1 in person...............117,698
Day 2 in person...............121,395
Day 3 in person...............113,065
Total in person...............351,921
Mail-in votes...............83,156
Total in person and mail-in...............435,077

In person voting is up 92%

mail-in voting is up 129.9%

Total early voting is up 98.3%

That means the early voting for the first three days of the 2010 election is virtually double the  first three days of the 2006 early voting.   That's a huge jump and really good numbers for an off-year election.

I'm not sure what this means other than the electorate in Texas seems to be more energized than expected.   Maybe Texas voters are sick of the current leadership, or maybe angry Republicans are turning out in large numbers -- or maybe both are true.   We'll have to wait to see (and to see if the numbers remain high through all of early voting and on election day).   But so far, it's turning out to be an interesting off-year election.