Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Early voting in Harris County is…different this year

by

Harris County early voting is far surpassing any previous non-presidential year. Although both parties are seeing an increase in voting over 2014, the Democrats are exceeding their early voting in 2016’s presidential election which pitted Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders. You have to go back to Barack Obama’s first run in 2008 to find Democrats voting at a faster clip than this year.

Here is a chart of early voting for both parties, sorted by highest in-person vote, through Monday the 26th:

harris county early voting

And here is a cumulative chart for the 2016 primary:

harris county early voting

As you can see in the first chart, Democrats have overtaken Republicans in total votes. I suspect that their lead will increase substantially this week, which is the first week that the polls have been open from 7a to 7p. Remarkably, at least to me, they are getting close in mail-in ballots and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them take the lead there as well. Republicans have owned the mail-in ballots for years.

Have we reached the turning point in Harris County? Can Republicans compete? We’ll have to wait until November to answer those questions.

We can, however look at who is voting in each primary. Derek Ryan of Ryan Data is providing us with a few statistics that are normally reserved for the insiders at the top campaigns. Thank you Derek!

One of the thoughts going around is that Democrats are invading Republican primaries this year to vote for education. Here are a couple of charts from Ryan Data about that.

First, statewide Republican primary voters through Sunday, 2/25/18:

early voting 2018

Here are a few counties showing who has voted early.

The following is a breakdown of who has voted early in the Republican Primary based on their past Primary and General Election History. (Example: In Bexar County, 82.1% of the people who have voted early are previous Republican Primary voters with no past Democratic Primary history.)

early voting 2018

As you can see, there is very little evidence that Democrats are crossing over in mass to vote for education. It does appear that in Tarrant and Travis counties this could be happening. There is a decent increase in November voters for Republicans – I suspect these are the ones voting for education. Remember, that is simply my speculation and it is NOT what Ryan Data is saying.

Here is the statewide Democratic percentages:

early voting

As you can see, the Democrats are benefiting from voters new to the primary process. As you can see from the chart, 18.9% of the D primary voters have voted only in previous general elections statewide. Unfortunately, Ryan Data is not receiving the data for the D primary in Harris County, so we are uncertain where their increase is coming from.

Many Harris County Republicans are walking around like zombies after reading articles touting the Democratic turnout. They are forgetting a few things.

First, this isn’t November. November is a long way away and anything can happen between now and then.

Second, Republican voting is actually up from 2014.

Third, Greg Abbott is working hard to make Republicans in HD134 think that we are nothing more than neanderthals. Against vaccinations. For Jade Helm. Calling Sarah Davis a terrorist. If I were a typical voter, I’d shy away from Republicans too.

Fourth, Greg Abbott is going to pivot once the election is over. He is going to pour quite a bit of that $43 million war chest into Harris County to try and win here. He will be touting the good things that Ed Emmett, Jack Morman and other Republicans have done to make Harris County so successful.

Fifth, Ed Emmett and Jack Morman are on the ballot. Emmett is extremely popular with voters in both parties and he’ll work hard for all Republicans, even if straight ticket voting isn’t his thing. And Morman is sitting on a ton of cash that he will use to drive voter turnout in his race in Precinct 2. Simply having an Hispanic on the ticket doesn’t mean that Precinct 2 is going to turn away an incumbent that has a GREAT record of helping the communities in Precinct 2.

So chin up Harris County Republicans! Vote for reasonable, well qualified candidates in every race. Doing that will allow the party to field a ticket that voters will elect. Failure to do that, as we saw in 2016 with Devon Anderson at the top of the local ticket, will turn voters away. I assure you that I won’t vote straight ticket if three guys running slates get their wish and we elect a few wholly unqualified candidates, particularly judges.

Harris County Early Voting sets records, R's in good shape

by

As predicted, Harris County voters did set a record for most votes cast during the early voting period. A total of 700,216 ballots were cast in person at the 37 early voting locations spread out around the county. That is an increase of 3.2{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} over the previous record of 678,312 set in 2008. The number of absentee ballots returned during the 12 days of early voting was 66,310, an increase of 19.6{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} over the previous record of 55,446 also set in 2008. The combined total of 766,526 represents an increase of 4.5{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} over 2008.

As we saw in 2010, there is an enthusiasm gap between traditional Democratic areas and traditional Republican areas in terms of votes cast in person. Here is an overall look with each polling location ranked by Increase or (Decrease) in ballots cast:

2012 Early Voting in Harris County

Those red/blue tiles represent the party of the State Representative District in which the poll location lies. Here is another view:

2012 Early Voting in Harris County

I might be alone in this but to me that shows a huge enthusiasm gap and is a very positive sign for the Harris County Republican Party. Obviously, these aren’t 100{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} districts for either party but if you take the up/down in the aggregate, I think that you can get a general idea of where this election is heading. The net movement from blue to red districts is roughly 57,000 votes.

If you glance at the 134 locations, you can see the effect of the Sarah Davis/Ann Johnson battle, especially that West Loop location, which is up 61{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. I have no explanation for the 40{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} increase a the Kashmere location – I can’t think of a race or issue that is hot in that area. Sen. Dan Patrick’s SD7 is dominating turnout, as usual. Say what you want about him, he gets the vote out.

I doubt that election day is going to change what I think will be a strong R showing. Notice that I didn’t say sweep – I remain hopeful for Sheriff candidate Louis Guthrie but there does seem to be a strong crossover vote for the incumbent, Adrian Garcia, if you talk to a lot of Republicans, as I do. Here are the straight ticket on election day numbers from the past five elections:

Obviously, 2006 was an outlier – recall that the big race that year was the four way battle for governor between Rick Perry, Chris Bell, Grandma Strayhorn, and Kinky Friedman. And 2010 was a bit different because you had Bill White on the top of the ticket – many Republicans voted for him because he was perceived as a moderate and he won Harris County. I’m guessing that R’s will return to their camp and you’ll see more Republicans turn out than Democrats.

Just because I say it is going to be a good day for R’s doesn’t mean that I’m not still encouraging people to get out and vote. I’ll be phone banking tomorrow and hope that every conservative Republican that reads this does the same. Here are the locations for the victory centers if you can volunteer an hour or two of your time:

[table id=11 /]

Take nothing for granted, get ten people to the polls on Tuesday, and ask them to vote Straight R. Your grandchildren will thank you.

Harris County Early Voting Shattering Records

by

No question about it, the voters of Harris County are turning out in droves to vote early this year.

[table id=12 /]

More important to me is “where is the enthusiasm?” thus far. At this point seven days into early voting, it looks like a repeat of 2010 in Harris County, with traditionally strong Republican areas having the highest turnout and increase from 2008:

Harris County In-person Early Voting through Day 7

The Crosby location was added in 2010, so to get a better picture, I combine that with Kingwood.

I made it to four polling locations yesterday. Freeman Library in Clear Lake and Annex 25 in Pasadena had long lines out the door. IBEW 66 in Pasadena and Palm Center in Houston had no lines at all.

As I noted earlier, there was a rally held at the Shrine of the Madonna with a walk to the polls led by Minister Robert Muhammad. About a dozen people marched down MLK Blvd. to vote at the Palm Center. Interesting that County Attorney Vince Ryan was among them – remember, the rally was sponsored by Texans Together, a group that had multiple problems with registering voters in 2010. Instead of holding the group accountable, Mr. Ryan settled a lawsuit on a partisan basis.

A few pictures from the day:

[scrollGallery id=4]