Spotlight on Texas: Record Breaking Early Vote Turnout

From the Texas Secretary of State’s website, a list of all early voters for each county can be downloaded for each day of early voting. We collected these early voter lists and merged them to a Texas voter file, which we collected in the middle of summer 2020. The voter file contains the age of all registered voters. But because of when we received the voter file, we are missing the ages of voters who registered between September 3rd and the 5th of October. We requested the voter file in August and received it at the beginning of September. The registration dates in our voter file end onSeptember 2nd. Because we do not have voters who registered between September 3rd and October 5th in the voter file, we are missing their ages and so instead classify them as “unmatched” registrants.

The table below shows the age distribution of early voters, and Figure 3 shows age density plots for both early voters and the set of all registered voters. Young voters make up only about 7.2% of the early vote, while voters over the age of 45 make up more than half of the early votes. Overall, 405,890 early voters (4.2%) could not be matched to the voter file — likely because they registered after September 2.

Using two-party vote shares at the county level, we can examine how early turnout in 2020 is related to previous election returns. Figure 4 shows early votes in 2020 as a share of total votes in 2016 on the y-axis, with 2016 presidential two-party democratic vote share on the x-axis. The size of the circle is total registered voters in a county. Generally, larger counties and counties that were more democratic in 2016 have higher 2020 early vote turnout (relative to their 2016 total turnout) than smaller counties or less democratic counties (i.e. rural counties).

In the 2018 midterms, there was a marked shift towards democrats — Ted Cruz won his statewide U.S. Senate race against Beto O’Rourke by only 2.5%, relative to Donald Trump’s win of 9% only two years earlier. Figure 5 shows 2020 early votes as a percentage of 2016 total votes by how much each county shifted towards democrats between the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 U.S. Senate race (two party vote shares). Figure 5 shows the positive correlation between democratic shifting areas and 2020 early vote turnout. Consistent with other media reports, these figures suggest that the early votes will lean Democratic, while the election day votes will lean more republican.

Just from the early vote totals, Texas is at 57% turnout as a percentage of registered voters, and it has already exceeded its total votes cast in 2016. Surveys suggest that as many as 12 million people may cast ballots in Texas this election, which would be over 71% total turnout. Older voters (age 45+) make up slightly more than half of the early votes. Texas early votes are more concentrated in larger counties and in democratic leaning counties, both in terms of 2016 democratic vote shares as well as in terms of the shift towards democrats between the 2016 Presidential election and the 2018 U.S. Senate election.

On election day, there are few things to watch for. It seems likely that, because of lower exposure risk to COVID and due to partisanship, rural and more republican counties will have higher election day turnout (as a percentage of registered voters) relative to more urban and democratic counties. Returns from smaller rural counties, and whether they catch up to their 2016 vote totals or 2016 turnout, will be an early sign of whether these counties will be under-weighted relative to the large surge in turnout expected in the suburbs and cities, based on their early vote totals. Looking at the democratic vote shares in large suburban counties — especially in Denton, Collin, Williamson, Hays, and Fort Bend — will give an indication of whether the suburbs have swung away from or towards Trump relative to 2016, similar to patterns we saw in 2018. And in the big cities, high election day turnout should net Biden even more Democratic votes.