Monday, November 03, 2008

More Early Voter Stats From Fort Bend County

Yesterday I looked at early voters and young voters and compared them. Today I thought I would look at the statistic that is being reported all over the country: How many Democrats voted in the early vote vs. Republicans.

Now the Texas Voter Activation Network is still not right in tune with numbers reported by the county elections office, but it’s closer now. And again, I am looking at trends, not raw numbers. Well rough raw numbers later.

Of the total voters who showed up at the early voting polls in Fort Bend County, 46% of them voted in the 2008 Democratic Primary. Of these numbers, 1% of these registered to vote in Fort Bend County this year. My guess is that these numbers are in and among the voters who are in the 18-30 age group studied yesterday.

Republicans who early voted? 21% of Republicans who early voted also voted in the Republican Primary. Not a single one of them registered to vote this year. Now it is known that Republicans like to vote on Election Day because it is all over TV that they do.

But not in Fort Bend County.

In fact, in Fort Bend County Republicans have beat Democrats to the early vote every year. In 2006 early votes for Kay Bailey Hutchison in Fort Bend County numbered 24,611 (62%) to 13,186 (34.4%) for Barbara Ann Radnofsky.

In 2004, Fort Bend County Republicans cast 50,663 early votes for Bush/Cheney (60%) where Democrats cast 33,351 early votes for Kerry/Edwards (40%). That year, it was the Democrats who cast more votes than Republicans on Election Day.

Things are kind of different this year.

If Republicans can scare up the 43,000 votes that they voted on Election Day in 2004, that gets them up to 70,000 votes more or less. These are sure thing votes I would think. Then you have to guess how many of the remaining 33% of early voters who did not vote in the March primary were Republicans. That’s around 50,000 votes.

Likewise, if Democrats can bring in the 35,000 Democratic votes in 2004, that brings them up to roughly total 85,000 votes.

Get it? Democrats will only need 36% of those 50,000 unknown early votes to win in Fort Bend County, Republicans will need 64% of that pot.

And that’s assuming that the Democrats will keep to their unexceptional 2004 turnout numbers.

And what are the chances of that happening?

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