Texas Early Voting Tops 4.5 Million Ballots in Week One - a Record Midterm Pace, but Still a Shade Behind 2018

Nearly 4.5 million Texans cast a ballot in the first seven days of early voting, according to Texas secretary of state data reported by The Texas Tribune: 23.4 percent of the state's record 19 million registered voters had voted in person or by mail through Sunday. The pace outruns the 2022 midterm but sits slightly behind 2018, when 24.3 percent had voted at the same point in the year Democrat Beto O'Rourke fell 2.6 points short of unseating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Analysts cautioned against reading a winner into the numbers. Texas voters do not register by political party, counties self-report their daily results to the state, and each election "tends to be a little unique," said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. "I think there's sometimes a tendency to over-interpret early vote numbers because we don't have good benchmarks," Jones said. "It's an evolving process, and every election tends to be a little unique."

By primary history, voters who had previously voted in a Democratic primary accounted for 35 percent of ballots cast, slightly ahead of 33 percent for Republican primary voters, with about 29 percent having no prior primary participation - a split Republican consultant and data analyst Derek Ryan called new territory. Ryan expects the pace to increase into a busy Friday close, predicted as many as 10 million Texans may vote in all, and said the picture will sharpen by Thursday or Friday. Early voting ends Friday, Oct. 30; Election Day is Nov. 3.