Turnout in the Big Fifteen tapered off from projections by just a hair, ending up at 890,615. The secretary of state estimates that 60 percent of the state has voted early, which suggests a final turnout of 2.13 million, but I have no idea how accurate that estimate is. Given how many early voters seem to be new primary voters, I'm sticking with my original 2.4 million estimate..
This chart shows turnout as a percentage of the county's registered voters. At the top are Hidalgo county (McAllen) and Travis County (Austin). In addition to Travis, suburban/exurban counties that have favorable demographics for Barack Obama—Williamson, Fort Bend, and Collin—experienced larger-than-average late surges in turnout than other counties. This suggests that Obama ground game may have an advantage.
As for results, it's very, very close. Obama has to get about 40% of the vote in the rest of the state outside the big fifteen. I think there are enough uncounted affluent voters in the suburbs and African-Americans in East Texas to put him over the top. But it's hard to tell.
Campaigns keep encouraging early voting. Why is that?
Get the voter "in the bag"/remove them from further canvassing and GOTV, freeing campaign resources for other tasks on election day?
Make sure committed/favorable voters actually do vote, instead of being discouraged by long lines on election day?
Posted by: dm | March 04, 2008 at 11:43 AM