The TX Secretary of State only publicly releases early vote totals for its top 30 counties. Including absentee vote by mail and in-person votes, their tally stands at 4,884,528. According to Tom Bonier of TargetSmart and respected TX election analyst Michael Li, 5.8 million votes were cast when accounting for all 254 counties.
An incredible 5.8 million ballots have been cast in Texas. That's 1.1 million more votes cast than in the entire 2014 election!Voters age 18-39 account for 24% of those ballots. They were only 13% of the early vote in '14. These are not minor shifts we're witnessing.
8:27 PM - 4 Nov 2018
Nearly 1.4 million 18-39 year olds have already voted in Texas, nearly doubling their 2014 numbers!
According to CNN’s 2016 exit polls, 18-39 year old Texans made up an estimated 37% of the electorate. Hillary lost 18% of the 18-29s to Johnson & Stein, while breaking even with Trump amongst 30-39. It’s a safe bet Beto will improve upon Hillary’s margins and pull closer to Obama-like dominating margins from 18-29s. All polls also point to Beto winning 30-39 cohort.
To win Beto needs near presidential-level turnout (8.9 million). Nate Silver projects 7.3 million while Professor McDonald of the Election Project, projects is more bullish at 7.6 million.
Derek Ryan, of Ryan Data & Research is a former research director for the TX GOP. He’s also a NeverTrumper who has been providing the most detailed analysis of the early vote breakdown of the top 15 counties.
“A few stats for the entirety of the early voting period:
Voters with previous Republican Primary election history now hold a +147,000 vote advantage over voters with previous Democratic Primary election history. Non-primary voters hold a +614,000 vote advantage over Republican Primary voters.
69.5% of voters who most recently voted in a Republican Primary ended up voting early, while 71.3% of voters who most recently voted in a Democratic Primary voted early.
Only 36.3% of previous General Election voters with no primary history voted early.
Voters under the age of 30 made up 12.3% of all votes cast during early voting.
18.4% of people who voted early this year waited until Election Day to vote in 2014.”
After crunching the data, Ryan projects a whopping 8.2 million total turnout. If he’s right, TX would double its 2014 midterm and come within 8% of 2016’s record-breaking turnout.
I am running projections and am coming up with 8.2M voters in Texas tomorrow.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Stay tuned. I may revise those.
1:53 PM - 5 Nov 2018
The huge turnout stands to blow the doors off all pollsters’ models but digging deep, Beto needs certain margins to win it:
Hold Hillary’s big Latino margins while boosting their turnout rates
Landslide margin from 18-29s
Double digit win from 30-39s
Improve Hillary’s 49-47% performance with female vote
GOP represent 38% of registered voters, and they’re extremely reliable voters. To counter their registration edge, a Dem must win Independents. This is where Hillary lost the race as Trump won Indies by 14 points; 9% voted 3rd party and those voters are up for grabs this time.
Finally, Beto needs landslide margins from the new voters category which made up 11.5% of the 5.8 million that early voted.
Come on, Texas, PROVE every pollster wrong and beat my own Cruz by 2% prediction!!!
