Texas Turnout

I think the folks at Burnt Orange report are serious lowballing the projected Texas Democratic primary turnout. In past primaries, week 1 early voting accounts for roughly 40% of early turnout. That means we can reasonably expect 900,000 early Democratic votes out of the fifteen most populated counties. In the 2004 Presidential election, 53.1% of those counties' voters voted early, and the counties accounted for 69.8% of the state's votes for John Kerry. Multiplying that out, we arrive at a turnout of ... 2.4 million voters, consistent with this primary season's pattern of 75,000-90,000 voters per congressional district. And I still think this is the low end of the projection; the 2004 election was a foregone conclusion in Texas, so voters had very little incentive to go to the polls on election day. With the contest over on the Republican side, giving crossover Republicans an excuse to vote D, there's an outside chance that Clinton and Obama will combine for more votes than John Kerry received in '04.

Update: tempering previous Texas boosterism, Charles Kuffner suggested there's a possibility that a larger share of voters will vote early this time, as both campaigns have pushed this message. But I wouldn't bet on it,