EARLY VOTING: Surge of new voters propels Harris County’s record turnout
A late surge of new voters helped Harris County achieve record early turnout and suggests that local registration drives paid off — although to which party’s benefit remains anyone’s guess until Tuesday night.
While partisan primary voters dominated the first week of early voting, new voters flocked to polls in the final days. These newcomers,
who did not vote here in recent presidential election years, made up 22 percent of Harris County’s more than 977,000 early and mail voters, a Chronicle analysis of voter history shows.
By early voting’s end Friday, the share of voters who participated in at least
one of the last three presidential primaries dwindled to 56 percent from 68 percent.
Democratic presidential primary voters outpaced Republicans by roughly 2 percentage points: 27.5 percent to 25.2 percent. Nearly 4 percent have mixed primary voting history, and 22 percent voted in recent general elections, but none of the last three presidential primaries.
Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said these figures give both parties reason for optimism.
“If you’re a glass-half-full Republican, you focus in on the general election voters turning out in predominantly Republican precincts at a higher rate than in Democratic precincts,” Jones said. “And if you’re a glasshalf-full Democrat, you’re focusing on your ability to match Republicans in terms of the number of partisans who turn out.”
Harris County, which now is home to more than 2.2 million registered voters, consistently votes Republican in mid-term election years, but has swung Democratic by a small margin in the past two presidential elections.
Democrat Hillary Clinton led Republican Donald Trump by 7 percentage points in Harris County’s latest presidential poll, conducted by the University of Houston in early October.
Statewide increase
Brandon Rottinghaus, a UH political scientist, noted the geographic diversity of the county’s new voters, who include transplants to Harris County, newly registered voters and those who recently turned 18.
“New voters are increasing where the population is increasing, some in Republican-leaning areas but many in Democraticleaning areas,” Rottinghaus said in an email, pointing to traditionally conservative neighborhoods like Katy and Kingwood, and to left-leaning neighborhoods immediately west of downtown. “As these voters go, so goes Harris County.”
This region is not alone in seeing an uptick of new voters toward the end of early voting.
An analysis of early turnout in 20 Texas counties by Austinbased Republican consultant Derek Ryan shows an average of 15 percent of early voters were new, through the second-to-last day of early voting. That compares with 12 percent of those
Election Day
Harris County’s polls are open from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday. Voters must cast ballots at their precinct polling place, which can be found at www.harrisvotes.com.
who turned out during the first week.
“We’ve moved from the people that always vote to the people that are voting in this election, for the most part,” said local political consultant Robert Jara, who is working for two Democratic state House candidates. “They may not have a history of voting, but they are engaged this particular election.”
Marcus Merz, a 22-year-old UH student, didn’t vote in 2012. He had no particular reason for not doing so; he just didn’t want to. This year is different. “All of my professors have said, ‘If you don’t plan on voting, you should.’ Because this election is historical,” said Merz, who voted for the first time last Friday, near NRG Stadium. “A lot of things can happen depending on the outcome of this election. It feels like an episode of a TV show, or a sitcom almost.”
Election Day turnout, which constituted 35 percent of the total vote in 2012 and 37 percent in 2008, is a topic of fraught speculation among political observers, given Harris County’s record early turnout.
Tuesday turnout projections from political scientists and consultants ranged from 300,000 to 600,000 voters.
Both local parties emphasized their ongoing efforts to usher voters to the polls.
“As Republicans continue to remain quiet about the verbal vulgarities coming out of the Trump campaign and their supporters, Democrats continue to be energized,” local Democratic Party chair Lane Lewis said, noting that volunteers were poised to complete between 18,000 and 20,000 voter calls a day.
Methods questioned
Harris County Republican Party chair Paul Simpson stressed the importance of voting in local races, but he also criticized the Chronicle’s voter history analysis for not considering the 2010 and 2014 primaries.
“The study conducted by the Houston Chronicle used cherrypicked data to create the illusion that more Democrat primary voters have early-voted than Republican primary voters. But that study wrongly ignored nonpresidential primaries,” Simpson said in an email.
He pointed to Ryan’s analysis, which shows that Harris County voters with a Republican primary voting history outpaced their Democratic counterparts by 9 percentage points, through last Thursday.
Ryan checked whether Harris County’s early voters turned out in the 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 primaries, whereas the Chronicle considered only presidential primaries, when far more voters participate.
Asked whether he thought the Chronicle missed many primary voters by using that approach, Ryan said, “There are probably very few people who are voting in gubernatorial primaries who aren’t voting in presidential primaries.”
The Chronicle’s consideration of the 2008 primaries — which drew record Democratic participation — likely explains, in part, why its analysis found that nearly 28 percent of Harris County’s early voters had a Democratic primary voting history and 22 percent had only a general election voting history, whereas, through the second-to-last day of early voting, Ryan identified 22 percent of county voters as Democratic primary participants and 33 percent as general election voters.
Ryan cautioned against assuming voters with partisan voting history will vote for that party’s nominee.
“In the past, I might have said 90-95 percent of Republican primary voters who are showing up are voting for the Republican nominee,” Ryan said. “I’m not sure I feel comfortable even guessing this election because you might have a significant number of those that decide to vote Gary Johnson or one of the write-in candidates. Or, shoot, you might even have some that skip over the presidential race completely and start voting down ballot.”
Tracking Hispanic numbers
Political observers also are closely tracking Hispanic participation.
Rice University political scientist Bob Stein said he expects Hispanics to make up more than 20 percent of the overall vote, up from about 16 percent four years ago.
“Trump provided an incentive for Hispanic voters to register and vote,” said Stein, who also attributed that projected increase to the aging of Harris County’s Hispanic population.