Chip Roy Warns the Texas Early Vote Surge Makes the Election Close, With More Than 6.4 Million Ballots Cast
Rep. Chip Roy told a Friday television audience that Texas's massive early-voting surge — more than 6.4 million ballots, about 50 percent above 2022 — makes Tuesday's election close, as both sides gear up for Election Day.
A Texas Republican congressman put his own party on notice Friday about the size of the early vote. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, joined Fox's 'The Will Cain Show' on Friday to discuss what the program described as the massive early voting surge in Texas, with over 6.4 million ballots cast — a roughly 50 percent increase from 2022 — as both sides gear up for Election Day, according to the network's account of the segment, read this cycle. Roy's warning, in the segment's own framing, was that the surge makes the election close.
The numbers behind the warning are the ones this station has tracked all week. Texas passed 6.3 million early ballots as of Wednesday, up 50 percent from 4.2 million at the same point four years ago, in the Associated Press compilation; the Election Lab-based counts put the state past 6.8 million through Thursday. The surge is concentrated where the Senate map is hottest, and Texas voters are deciding the Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton, the governor's race, and every U.S. House seat — including Roy's own Hill Country district.
A surge is not a result, and nothing in Friday's segment changed that. Early totals show who voted, never how; party-registration states show a different mix than Texas, which does not register by party; and Republicans have historically turned out more strongly on Election Day itself. What Roy's appearance signals is narrower and still notable in the final weekend: a senior Texas Republican, on a friendly network, telling his own voters on the record that the other side's turnout has made Tuesday close — and that Republican voters who have not voted yet are now the race. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.
