Early voting turnout ‘healthy but not historic’ for Harris County Democrats
Democratic primary voters surged to the polls in Harris County on Friday, surpassing turnout from 2016 but falling well short of their record-setting performance in 2008.
Republican primary voters, meanwhile, turned out in largerthan-expected numbers thanks to a handful of high-profile congressional and legislative contests. The result also could signal early enthusiasm among GOP voters for President Donald Trump’s reelection, experts and political strategists said.
A total of 139,533 Democratic primary voters returned mail ballots and voted in person across the 11-day early voting period that ended Friday. Though turnout did not match the roughly 177,000 early votes from Harris County’s
2008 Democratic primary, it easily outstripped 2016, when turnout reached 85,793.
“The turnout has been healthy but not historic, especially compared to 2008 when the numbers were massive,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “That’s a good sign for Democrats, but it doesn’t signal tremendous growth in the Democratic electorate.”
The fluid state of the Democratic presidential primary may have dampened early voting turnout, with some voters awaiting results from Saturday’s South Carolina contest. The candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden is said to hinge on a strong showing there, while other lower-performing candidates could drop out between South Carolina and Super
Tuesday, when Texas and 13 other states will hold their primaries.
The Republican primary, meanwhile, totaled 104,909 early and mail ballots — a massive uptick from the 2018 midterm cycle, but well below the roughly 131,000 who turned out early for the 2016 Republican contest.
Though Trump does not face a viable primary challenge this year, he has driven large turnout in the Iowa and New Hampshire Republican primaries as voters looked to show early support for his re-election bid.
Republicans also are being galvanized by the early momentum of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who’s a self-avowed democratic socialist, and the popularity of his policies with some down-ballot candidates, Republican political consultant Jessica Colon said.
“The burden is on the Democrats to harness the enthusiasm in this election cycle, and they’re not really proving they have a lot of enthusiasm for the candidates at the top of the ballot,” Colon said, arguing the Democratic candidates for president and U.S. Senate in Texas are “too extreme and divisive.”
Though political observers are eager for signals about how the general election will play out, primary turnout generally does not predict how the parties will perform in November, Democratic strategist Keir Murray said. In 2016, he noted, Harris County Republicans crushed Democrats in turnout during the primary then fell victim to a blue wave during the general in November.
Primary turnout can signal whether a party’s voters are enthusiastic early in the election cycle, but it is not a reliable predictor of how voters will behave months from now, Rottinghaus said.
“It’s worth reading into with skeptical eyes,” he said. “It can tell us how juiced up the base is to vote, but beyond that, a lot of things will happen between now and November.”
Through Thursday, the makeup of the Democratic and Republican primaries in Harris County largely mirrored prior election cycles: Democratic voters were far younger and more ethnically diverse than their Republican counterparts, according to data from Murray.
Women outnumbered men in the Democratic primary, 57 percent to 43 percent, falling generally in line with prior cycles. And just 15 percent and 4 percent of Democratic and Republican primary voters were under age 35, respectively.
“We’ve seen a lot of talk about an increase in youth voters, but there’s not a tremendous amount of evidence for that so far,” Murray said. “In the Republican primary, it’s the usual suspects — old, white, habitual voters.”
In Harris County, 89 percent of Republican primary voters were white and 59 percent were 65 or older, according to Murray’s data. About 42 percent of Democratic primary voters were white, while 36 percent were African American, compared with just 1 percent in the Republican primary.
Meanwhile, 5.5 percent of Democratic primary voters in Harris County had voted in prior Republican primaries but never in a Democratic contest until this year, according to data from Republican strategist Derek Ryan, suggesting some Republicans are crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary.
Democrats appeared to be drawing more new voters to the fold: 27 percent of Democratic primary voters had not voted in any of the last three primaries, compared with 14 percent of those in the Republican contest.