Early voting ends; turnout up for runoffs

Early voting in Houston’s runoff elections ended Tuesday with 115,204 ballots cast in Harris County, producing a higher turnout than the first round despite two fewer days to visit the polls.

Nearly all county ballots were cast in Houston’s runoffs for mayor and City Council, along with contests for the Houston ISD and Houston Community College boards. The exception: two City Council races in Bellaire, where there are 12,481 registered voters, compared to 1,085,813 in Houston.

In the Nov. 5 election, about 109,000 Houston voters cast ballots early and by mail in Harris County, short of the total reported Tuesday evening by the Harris County Clerk’s Office. It was not immediately clear how many of those voters live in Bellaire, though just 955 voters turned out early for that city’s mayoral election in the first round.

The Houston mayoral runoff has proved more lackluster than expected, particularly after second-place finisher Tony Buzbee and fellow challenger Bill King spent much of the nearly yearlong campaign attacking incumbent Sylvester Turner as corrupt. The runoff, nonetheless, pro

duced a higher per-day early vote total than the first round, indicating Buzbee and Turner were using their political machines effectively to keep supporters engaged, University of Houston political science professor Jeronimo Cortina said.

“It has been, to a certain extent, a less scandalous campaign,” Cortina said. “We haven’t seen significant attacks between the candidates. So, you can make the argument that even though the candidates are not focused on negative things, people are more motivated to vote.”

The runoffs will be decided Saturday, when polls reopen from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 385 voting centers across the county. Registered voters may cast ballots at any location, including those outside their home precinct.

During the first round, 241,032 voters weighed in on the 12-candidate mayoral field, with more than 107,605 voting early and 133,427 on Election Day. That total fell short of turnout in 2015, when 261,059 people voted in the mayor’s race, but easily surpassed the 169,795-person turnout in 2013.

In the 2015 mayoral runoff, 115,668 voters cast ballots early and by mail, roughly in line with the total from 2019. Some mail ballots are still outstanding in the 2019 runoff.

In Fort Bend County, 1,529 voters had cast ballots early and by mail for the Houston runoffs through the first nine days of early voting. Tuesday’s voting totals were not immediately available. Nearly 2,000 voted early in the first round.

A breakdown of Houston runoff early voters by age, gender, race and party in Harris County shows little meaningful change between the November and December elections, according to data from the Texas Democratic Party shared by Keir Murray, a Houston-based Democratic consultant.

Through Thursday, the penultimate day of early balloting, 52 percent of Houston voters in Harris County had a “Democratic score,” which is based on several different metrics that rate voters’ partisanship, while 35 percent of voters had a “Republican score.”

In the Nov. 5 election, including Election Day, 52 percent of voters had a Democratic score and 31 percent had a Republican score. The remaining voters were in the middle or unknown.

In that election, Turner received 46.4 percent of the vote in Harris County and 46.8 percent overall, compared to Buzbee’s 28.8 percent finish in Harris County and 28.4 percent overall.

With Buzbee drawing most of his support from Republicans and Turner getting his from Democrats, the Election Day voting population would likely have to undergo a dramatic change from early voting for Buzbee to have a shot, Murray said.

“When you start a runoff down (almost) 20 points, something has to be significantly different in the second round to get a different result,” Murray said. “And I just don't see it, unless people are behaving in a particularly different way, and there's no reason to assume that.”

Neither of Turner nor Buzbee appeared to be drawing many new voters, either, with 93 percent of runoff voters casting ballots in at least two of the last three general elections, and 75 percent voting in all three. Through Thursday, about 12,000 of the roughly 96,000 Houston runoff voters — or about 12.5 percent — did not vote in the November contest, according to Murray’s data.