Texas early voting turnout

[ginamac]

Just saw this in an AP story at http://tinyurl.com/5335q

Apologies to AP, but it's so short I'll post the whole thing:

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Early vote totals bring record 2.4 million Texans polls

10/30/2004

Associated Press

Texans turned out in record numbers for the two-week early voting period, Secretary of State Geoff Connor announced Saturday.

More than 2.4 (two-point-four) million Texans cast ballots in the state's 15 (fifteen) largest counties, representing 30 (thirty) percent of those counties' registered voters. Early voting for Tuesday's election began Oct. 18th and ended Friday.

This year's early vote totals represent a 58 (fifty-eight) percent increase over the 2000 election when former Texas Gov. George W. Bush, a Republican, won his first race for the presidency.

Although Texas is not considered a battleground state in Bush's re-election bid against Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, other down-ballot contests also are getting attention. Among them: hot congressional races in the wake of Republican-pushed redistricting and a tax proposal that would pay for a 75,000-seat stadium for the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington.

Connor has predicted that 59 percent of Texas' total 13.1 million registered voters will participate in Tuesday's general election.
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I think Connor's prediction is too low, but we'll see!

[gumby]

1. "Without DeLay"

Hookem Horns Tex Dems!!

[crispini]

2. Dallas co. EV totals: 322,738

That's about a 26% total voter turnout of our 1.2 million voters.

Now... here's the interesting part, I've been predicting a 65% total voter turnout. BUT, I have repeatedly heard that 30% of voters who vote, vote early. NOW, based on that assumption, IF TRUE, we're looking at a whopping 89% voter turnout.

Whooooo... I'm not even sure *I* believe that.

[ginamac]

7. I was told 50%/50%

early voting/election day voting, for Travis County, and looks like the SOS is making a similar prediction based on the numbers he gave. Most interesting! Yes, I have been thinking 65% statewide, maybe 70% in Travis, us being lefties and all!

[damntexdem]

11. No, the EV phenomenon likely changed that equation.

But every regular voter who voted early made the lines shorter today, on Election Day, so made it more likely that a less-dedicated Dem voter got into line and stayed in until a vote was registered. It's too early to know for sure, but the EV (and the greatly-increased registration) could bode very well today.

[sonias]

3. Doing our best to turn this state blue

Taking our state, our country and our world back from corrupt repuke administrations. Never underestimate the power of a dedicated and passionate Democratic base of activists.

When voters go to the polls in large numbers Democrats win.

Sonia

[CitySky]

4. notice that it's the LARGEST counties

-- which for the most part also happen to be the most Democratic. :)

[WolverineDG]

5. 246 counties in texas

i don't think they included the valley or webb county in their totals & i do know in webb we had 23K & change show up for early voting. in 2000, we had 32K total voting in the presidential race. we're expecting a massive turnout on tuesday.

dg

[ginamac]

6. er, I believe it's 254 counties

way too dang many, anyhow!

I also noted in a Yahoo News search when I found the AP story at the top of the thread that it said Angelina County (Deep East) had phenomenal turnout all the way through Friday.

[WolverineDG]

9. whoops

my bad....

dg

[ginamac]

8. Texas top 15 county populations

I wish they had just given a list, how hard would that have been? *grumble* Made me go look it up.

According to the 2000 census, the 15 most populous Texas counties are:

1 Harris County 3,400,578

2 Dallas County 2,218,899

3 Tarrant County 1,446,219

4 Bexar County 1,392,931

5 Travis County 812,280

6 El Paso County 679,622

7 Hidalgo County 569,463

8 Collin County 491,675

9 Denton County 432,976

10 Fort Bend County 354,452

11 Cameron County 335,227

12 Nueces County 313,645

13 Montgomery County 293,768

14 Jefferson County 252,051

15 Galveston County 250,158

[CitySky]

10. Thanks Ginamac

So which of these 15 will go blue? I'm in #1, and optimistic, but it's not a shoe-in like #4 and #5...

-Sky