As healthy early voting totals rolled in this week from the state’s most populous counties, underdog Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis linked the uptick to an organized statewide effort by Democrats to turn out voters, saying it’s a sign she will close a wide gap with Attorney General Greg Abbott in the final weeks before Election Day.
Political experts, however, say it’s too early to tell who is benefiting from all those additional ballots or whether the uptick will continue until early voting ends on Oct 31. Abbott’s campaign also is touting its aggressive efforts to boost turnout.
In the first two days of early voting, the number of ballots cast increased anywhere from 2 percent (Travis County) to 47 percent (Tarrant County) in the state’s five largest counties compared with the last gubernatorial election in 2010, according to early voting totals posted to the secretary of state’s website. Through Wednesday, nearly 6 percent of all registered voters in Travis County had cast votes early.
On Wednesday in Austin, a cheery Davis, a state senator from Fort Worth, told supporters preparing for a block walk that there had been “an incredible surge of minority turnout” in the first two days of early voting and that the best was yet to come because Democrats tend to cast ballots on the first weekend of early voting and in the second week.
“We are seeing in the early results coming in, of the mail-in ballot and the early vote, that our work is paying off,” Davis said to cheers.
Consultant Phillip Martin, deputy director of liberal group Progress Texas, said the numbers Davis is referring to, which he has reviewed, exclude almost all of Harris, Dallas and Travis counties. However, he said they show that turnout among Hispanic and African-American voters on the first day of early voting everywhere else jumped by 2 percent and 4 percent, respectively, compared with 2010, while the percentage of Anglo voters dropped by 8 percent.
“That’s a reflection of the Davis campaign and the work they’ve put in,” he said. “The early signs are very promising.”
But Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson said, “I think we’ve got to get deeper into the early voting period to see whether the surge holds up.”
Republicans have worked hard to turn out voters, too, Jillson said, so some of the initial surge is probably due to GOP efforts as well.
Abbott campaign spokeswoman Amelia Chasse said, “Our campaign is making unprecedented efforts to get out the vote in every corner of Texas, from traditional phone banks and block walks across the state to deploying innovative tactics to reach voters online. Greg Abbott is simultaneously crisscrossing the state, visiting over 25 cities in the final two weeks of the campaign to talk directly to voters about his vision to build an even better future for Texas.”
Rice University political scientist Mark Jones noted that early voting has been on the rise statewide during the past several elections as campaigns have seized upon the advantage it gives them in targeting specific voters over a longer period of time. He said counties have responded by opening more early voting locations and extending hours. (Twenty-two voting locations are open early in Travis County.)
From 2006 to 2010, the number of ballots cast in the gubernatorial race during early voting jumped from 39 percent to 53 percent statewide, according to the secretary of state.
“A modest increase in early voting is almost to be expected, particularly to the 2010 cycle,” Jones said, noting he anticipates ballots cast early to make up at least 60 percent of the total cast this election.
The fact that the election could largely be decided during early voting, he said, is more notable at this point than any uptick in turnout.
Jones, however, said a surge in mail-in ballots could benefit Democrats more “based on the logic that Democrats are much more active this year than in the past in promoting mail ballots while the GOP does not appear to have ramped up its mail ballot efforts as substantially compared to past elections.”
Battleground Texas — a Democratic effort to turn Texas blue that has worked closely with the Davis campaign — has focused on mail-in ballots.
In Harris County, those ballots drove a 5 percent increase in the number of votes cast during the first two days of early voting while in-person voting decreased by double-digit percentages.
Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir linked a sharp increase in mail-in ballots to the state’s strict new voter ID law.
“By-mail voting has jumped dramatically, by a magnitude of 10 times, and that is because some folks cannot meet the strict requirement of only having one of the seven kinds of identification,” she said.
Mail-in voting is available to voters 65 and older, disabled, outside their county of residence or confined in jail but otherwise eligible to vote.
Election Day is Nov. 4.
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