Because so many people vote early in Texas- 80% of Texans did so in 2024- the results of early voting have become increasingly important. With just a week left in early voting, the results so far are not looking good for Republicans.
As of yesterday, according to the website Theo Elections, about the same number of voters with exclusively Democratic or Republican primary histories had cast ballots. About a third of early voters either have no primary history or have voted in both parties' primaries at various times. I will refer to these voters as mixed. This is very different from 2024, when Republican-only primary voters made up 31% of the early electorate compared with 24% for Democratic-only primary voters, a seven-point Republican advantage.
The current percentage of mixed voters is remarkably close to the percentage of independents and partisan leaners in UT's latest poll, and those groups could well be comparable for purposes of estimating how the remaining less-partisan voters are breaking. If we use the UT results for independents and leaners as a proxy for today's mixed early voters, the Republican statewide candidates could already be behind by several hundred thousand votes.
However, as I pointed out in my last post, there are reasons to be skeptical of the UT polling, and at this point probably only about half of those who will ultimately vote have done so. It will therefore be particularly interesting to see how the early vote develops during the final week. If Republicans do not build the kind of advantage they carried into Election Day in 2024, they could be facing a very grim night next Tuesday.
Note 1: Theo Elections uses individual voter rosters to determine previous primary-election participation when that data is available. When it is unavailable or delayed, the site uses estimates based on previous precinct-level turnout. The site updates its estimates as voter-roster data becomes available.
