Historic enthusiasm floods the polls
Pent-up passions, political divide drive record turnout across the Houston area
Susan Henney seemed undaunted by the longwait ahead as she got in line to vote behind several dozen people Wednesday afternoon, the second day of early voting in Harris County.
Henney could have returned next week, when wait times likely will ease up across the county’s112 early voting sites — including at her chosen spot, Prairie View A&M University’s northwest Houston campus. But she did not want to wait any longer.
“I would literally walk over glass and through a wall of COVID to vote,” said Henney, 51, her voice slightly muffled through a face mask bearing an illustration of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court justice.
More than half a million Harris County voters cast their ballots for the Nov. 3 election through the first four days of early voting, a raw outburst of pent-up political energy that put the county on pace to demolish its own turnout record set just four years ago.
In interviews with more than 300 voters across the Houston area last week, it became clear that the factors driving a sharp divide between the two major political parties — namely President Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, the Democratic Party’s shift to the left and the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett— also were stirring up Harris County’s stunning turnout. Voters for both parties cast the election in dire terms, forecasting catastrophic conditions if their side were to lose.
“Without Trump, we are not going to have a country. We are going to have socialism. I hope Trump wins and saves our country,” said Bess Smith, 73, who voted Thursday at the East Montgomery County Fair Association building in New Caney.
Smith said she is concerned about Black Lives Matter, the organizing movement behind this year’s massive civil rights push, and antifa, the loosely affiliated movement of far-left activists that Trump has blamed for the violent protests that ensued after the Minnesota police killing of former Houston resident George Floyd.
Many voters in Harris and Fort Bend counties — where Democrats have made rapid electoral gains in recent elections — said they were fed up with the chaos that has unfolded during the Trump administration, from the stream-of-consciousness tweets to the country’s frayed relationships with longtime allies. Joe Biden supporter Cynthia Brown, 62, said she expected the Democratic nominee and his vice presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, to be more transparent than Trump.
“There won’t be so much deception and manipulation,” Brown said. “And the racial division, I’m totally opposed to that. I feel like Trump is fueling that. When President Obama was in office, we didn’t have all these issues. So, I’m looking for our country to return to normality, because we’ve had too much upheaval in the last four years.”
In rare cases, voters remained torn even as they waited in line to cast their ballots. Terry Loftin, 73, said he would make a game-time decision between Biden and Trump. He described himself as a lifelong Republican who is “seriously disappointed” in Trump.
“He’s still got that bombastic, developer mentality,” Loftin said outside the Lee G. Alworth Building, one of the early voting locations in Conroe. “In all truth, I feel like he’s a disgrace to the American presidency. And that’s not an easy thing for me to say.”
Still, Loftin said, he does not like Biden either. In all likelihood, he said, he may just vote for Trump.
During interviews, numerous voters who backed Trump in 2016 expressed distaste for the president’s style, temperament or even performance in office. Yet the vast majority said they planned to stick with him, in part because they consider Biden a farworse option.
One of those voters, Frances Smith, 79, said she was motivated by abortion and her desire to see conservative justices seated on the Supreme Court.
“I’m not voting for Trump because of the man, I’m voting for the principles that he stands for. I might hate the man as a person,” Smith said, adding that she opposes Biden’s support for abortion and gay rights.
Voter sentiments
Other takeaways from interviews with well over 100 supporters of both Biden and Trump, along with dozens who declined to reveal their preferred candidate, include:
• Democrats largely were motivated by their intense opposition to Trump, with several stating their vote was rooted in antiTrump sentiment more so than pro-Biden feeling. Shanna Kirl, a 42-year-old Biden supporter in Galveston, said, “It’s an antiTrump vote, for sure. Any Democrat would work.”
• Of the 48 voters who cited COVID-19 as a top issue, only two said they were voting for Trump, with the remainder backing Biden, declining to reveal their pick or, in one case, undecided.
• Of the 23 voters who said they were voting in their first presidential election, 10said theywere supporting Biden, nine were supporting Trump and four declined to reveal their choice.
• Few voters expressed familiarity with down-ballot contests beneath the U.S. Senate and U.S. House races, despite the furious battle raging for control of the Texas House this cycle.
The prevalence of voters who are unenthusiastically backing Biden and Trump is unsurprising, because U.S. voters are increasingly driven by their dislike for the other party instead of their support for their own party, said Elizabeth Simas, a University of Houston political science professor who studies voter behavior.
“It certainly cuts both ways with both parties, just becausewe basically have two choices,” Simas said. “Partisanship is extremely stable. It takes a lot to move somebody off their party. Andmy guess — and what the literature would suggest — is that those individuals whowould switch just stay home.”
Impact of turnout
Democrats have framed the massive turnout as a signal that Harris County is poised to be come a darker shade of blue this year, after Democrat Hillary Clinton carried the county by 12 percentage points over Trump in 2016 and Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke won the countywide vote by 17 points over Republican Sen. Ted Cruz two years later.
It remained too early to tell how the vote would shake out this year, with just about one-fifth of the county’s nearly 2.5 million registered voters turning out through Friday.
However, hints have begun to emerge. Through Thursday, 58 percent of ballots cast in Harris County had come from precincts won by Clinton in 2016. About 23 percent came from precincts Clinton carried with at least 75 percent of the vote, while just 8 percent came from precincts where she received 25 percent or less.
Though Texans do not register to vote by party affiliation, University of Houston political science professors Jeronimo Cortina and Brandon Rottinghaus have measured strong turnout across the first three days of early voting among those who voted in Harris County’s March Democratic primary. By Thursday, turnout had picked up in traditional Republican strongholds in the northern parts of the county.
Cortina said he has yet to see anything to suggest Harris County will reverse course from the last two elections, though he also cautioned overly optimistic Democrats.
“On average, Democrats like to vote early, and Republicans tend to vote on Election Day under normal circumstances,” Cortina said. “With the pandemic, though, who knows?”
Linda Dunegan, 72, was one of the early voters who said she is supporting Biden after voting for Trump in 2016. She said she had voted for Trump because she “felt like we needed some fresh blood,” but began regretting it once his administration implemented the policy of separating migrant children from parents who had illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump signed an order ending the policy after it generated intense backlash.
“He has taken children from their parents, betrayed our staunchest allies, cozied up to Russia, admires Putin — who takes care of his enemies and opponents by poisoning them and having them mysteriously disappear,” said Dunegan, adding that shewas “desperately wrong” to vote for Trump, “and I’ve regretted it ever since.”
Some said their decision came down to a single issue. Josiah Powell, 29, said he believes in “the sanctity of all life.” If a candidate “cannot get that right,” Powell said, “it rules them out for me.” Trump supporter Crystaline Wright, 47, said of the president: “I love the way he stood up to China.”
For some Biden supporters, the calculation was even simpler. Before casting his ballot at Rice Stadium, Paul Lewis-Jackson, 25, said he was voting against Trump because “I want to wake up and feel less angry.”
Ashley Carr, 34, brought along her toddler, Abrian, as she voted early at St. John Lutheran Church on Thursday. Carr, who is Black, noted that minority voters typically vote at lower rates than white voters.
“I just want people who look like me to be heard,” she said. “I hope this year is different.”