Texas Early Vote Tops 3.6 Million in the First Week; Bexar County at 241,604
More than 3.6 million Texans cast ballots in the first five days of early voting, about 19.4 percent of registered voters, with Harris County passing 500,000 and Bexar County at 241,604 through Friday.
Texas is voting at a pace no midterm has matched. More than 3.6 million Texans cast ballots in the first five days of early voting for the Nov. 3 general election, according to Texas Secretary of State data compiled by Transparency USA and posted Saturday afternoon — 3,673,801 votes in all, about 19.4 percent of the state's 18,966,727 registered voters. The total includes 3,514,704 in-person voters and 159,097 mail ballots, with 239 of the state's 254 counties reporting.
Monday's opening day was the busiest, with 784,148 in-person voters statewide. Turnout eased to 628,798 on Thursday, then climbed back to 677,374 on Friday, the data show. Harris County alone passed half a million ballots — about 1 in 5 of its registered voters — and ABC13 reported Saturday that no Harris County midterm on record back to 1998 has started faster, with more than 104,000 in-person votes on Monday alone, a first-day midterm record for the county.
The big counties account for much of the surge. Dallas County had recorded 318,148 votes through Friday, Tarrant County 263,634, Bexar County 241,604 and Travis County 210,878, according to the state data. Fort Bend County, at 138,972 votes, had turned out about 24.1 percent of its registered voters — a higher share than Harris. Older Texans are carrying the early vote: voters 65 and older have turned out at a 32.2 percent rate, compared with about 9 percent among voters under 35.
At the top of the ballot, Republican Ken Paxton, who defeated Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff in May, faces Democrat James Talarico and Libertarian Ted Brown for the U.S. Senate, while Gov. Greg Abbott seeks a fourth term against Democrat Gina Hinojosa and Libertarian Pat Dixon. Early voting continues through Friday, Oct. 30. Texas does not register voters by party; of those who have voted, 35.8 percent last voted in a Democratic primary and 34.1 percent in a Republican primary, according to Transparency USA's analysis — a rough picture of who has turned out, not how anyone voted this year.
