I've been doing a little research on voter turnout across TX since early voting started on Mon-10/21, and it looks like every major county's voter turnout has outpaced prior elections for the first day of early voting, except for Dallas county - which had a "technical glitch" of generating the WRONG ballots and may have driven away a lot of voters due to delays.
843K Texan voters (4.5% of TX's total registered voters) cast ballots on the first day of early voting (on 10/21) with over 12 counties not even being counted/added yet vs. 755K ballots cast on the first day of early voting in the 2020 Presidential election. Note that Texas has gained 1 million registered voters since the 11/2020 election.
Across the state, the highest population counties have already seen an average of 4-7% of registered voters cast ballots on the FIRST DAY of early voting, with Dallas county being the outlier @ 3.8% of registered voters casting ballots on 10/21, likely impaired by the voting machine "glitches" that occurred there.
First day of early voting (10/21) ballot tallies in high population N. Texas counties:
Dallas county @ 56K
Tarrant county (Ft. Worth metro) @ 58K
Collin county (Dallas suburban) @ 43.4K
Denton county (Dallas suburban) @ 49.8K
Per the Travis County Clerk, Austin/Travis county (Commie - deep blue) in central TX had "historic turnout" - breaking records for the past 3 elections with 46.6K voters casting ballots on the first day of early voting on Mon-10/21 (out of a total of 600K voters expected, 200K of which are anticipated on Election Day-11/5).
References cited: https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/long-wait-times-seen-as-early-voting-kicks-off-in-texas
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/texas-early-voting-2024-election-first-day-record/
First day of early voting in TX (10/21) - statewide voter turnout in major metro areas:
Harris county (Houston metro) got 125K voters - which is a 50% increase vs. the Nov. 2016 Presidential election. They compared first day early voting turnout stats to the Nov. 2016 election instead of comparing it to Nov. 2020 b/c the TX Sec. of State hadn't provided the Nov. 2020 early voting stats.
Travis county (Austin metro) got 46.6K voters, which is higher than the past 3 elections.
Bexar county (San Antonio metro) got 47K early voters and some waited in line for over 2 hours to vote.
Dallas county got 56K early voters (noted above)
Turnout was also up well over 2016 levels in more purple, suburban counties like the Houston suburbs of Fort Bend and the Dallas suburb of Collin County.
Reference cited: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4947150-texas-early-voting-turnout-record/
Per the Texas Sec. of State, here are some interesting TX voter stats:
•As of the 3/2024 primaries: TX had 18 million registered voters out of 22 million in voting age population (82% of TX voting age people were registered to vote)
•In the 11/2020 Presidential election, TX had 17 million registered voters out of 21.6 million in voting age population (78.5% of TX voting age people were registered to vote for POTUS election & 75% ratio during 2020 primaries)
•Key take-aways of 2024 vs. 2020 voter registrations: 1 million more TX registered voters in 2024 vs. 2020 with a 3.5% increase in registered voters ratio to voting age population in the March 2024 primaries & a 7% increase in registered voters ratio to voting age population compared to the March 2020 primaries.
Presidential 2020 voter turnout in TX:
•17 million registered voters / 21.6 million voting age population (78.5%)
•Voter turnout: 11.3 million out of 17 million registered voters (66.7%)
•March 2024 Republican primary voter turnout @ 2.3 million (13% of registered voters / 10.6% of voting age population)
•March 2024 Democrat primary voter turnout @ 982K (5.5% of registered voters / 4.5% of voting age population)
Reference cited: https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/historical/70-92.shtml
I also posted an update re: my experience at my local polling location in a Houston suburb, where I successfully voted (for Pres. Trump) on 10/22. :-) I got to observe the whole (publicly visible) voting operation inside my polling place for about an hour while I waited and thankfully didn't see any shenanigans. Also got feedback from election workers inside and the father of a (Republican) son who's running for TX state legislature re: the volume of voter turnout they're seeing compared to prior elections.
More details in the "UPDATE" portion of my 10/21 post here: https://greatawakening.win/p/199OKT6Q4n/houston-metro-dem-stronghold-pol/
Our polling place in Wilco has had steady 30+ minute line since Monday. We voted yesterday, no shenanigans noted!
Awesome! I used to live in WilCo and got to watch the head precinct captain do the daily early voting wrap-up and reconciliation of ballots cast that day (this was in 2022). I was interested in being a poll worker or watcher and asked if I could observe some of the operations to get a feel for how it all works. She was very gracious and let me watch her daily wrap-up process, even explaining what she was doing as she did it.
One of the big things I liked in their process (at my former precinct polling place in WilCo) was that each night, she reconciled the number of voters they had (with those daily voter counts even posted on the outside door) to the number of printed ballots submitted to make sure they match.
An interesting tidbit I learned from my time spent with her was that she said they remove all the paper ballots every night from each polling location and take them to the main county election office (I think that would be in Georgetown).