Texas Early Voting Update

Haven't done one of these in a while. Some notes:

• The biggest turnout outlier is Ford Bend County, a Houston suburb that has demographics that are very favorable to Barack Obama. As a percentage of the electorate, primary turnout in Fort Bend is traditionally 15-20% below turnout in Houston and Dallas counties; this time, it's running 15% higher.
• Outside of Fort Bend, the highest turnout increase is in the wealthy suburbs/exurbs of Dallas-Fort Worth, in Collin and Denton county, and the (heavily Republican) Austin suburbs of Williamson county.
• Turnout in the urban counties themselves has risen the most in Fort Worth (Tarrant County), Dallas, Houston (Harris), San Antonio (Bexar), and Austin (Travis), in that order. Austin has a much higher early voting baseline than the other cities.
• These big five counties account for two-thirds of the votes from the fifteen most populous counties, and probably about 45% of the overall vote. Polls show Obama winning all four of these metro areas. If Obama is also winning in Fort Bend, Colin, Denton, and Jefferson (Beaumont) counties as well, it's hard to see how he loses.
• After two big turnout days Wednesday and Thursday, we're on back on pace for 905,000 early votes edit: in the fifteen big counties. The range of overall turnout is between 1.85 million at the low end (based on 2006) to 2.85 million at the high end (based on 2004)—more than John Kerry received in 2004—with the most likely figure probably around 2.4 million.

Comments

[ikl]

It is dangerous to make predictions based on turnout in early voting, but it is hard to see how this can't be good news for Obama. Of course, because of the odd delegate math, a 5% Obama win might not be much better than a tie in terms of delegates.

[Joe]

The perceptions will change for Clinton if Obama wins the popular vote in Texas by one vote. With the Texas caucus, Obama will win a large majority of the Texas delegates even with a tie. But, Obama needs a popular vote win to legitimize his delegate victory in Texas.