AUSTIN, Texas - Texans have already cast more ballots in the presidential election than they did during all of 2016′s race — an unprecedented surge of early voting in a state that was once the country’s most reliably Republican, but may now be drifting toward battleground status.
More than 9 million ballots had been cast as of Friday morning in the nation’s second most-populous state, exceeding its 8.9-plus million votes four years ago, according to an Associated Press tally of Texas early vote data.
Texas is the first state to hit the milestone, according to AP’s count. This year’s numbers were aided by Democratic activists challenging in court for, and winning, the right to extend early voting by one week amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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“Y’all have been doing your thing,” Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris said during a drive-in rally in Fort Worth on Friday. “Early voting in Texas, 9 million? Now we know this is no time to let up on the peddle, though, right?”
Voters statewide don’t register by party affiliation, so no one can yet know which side will benefit from the surge. Turnout has also been inflated by Texas’ booming population. More than 16.9 million Texans are registered to vote in 2020, a roughly 1.8 million increase from 2016′s about 15.1-plus million. The number of early votes so far accounts for only about 53% of statewide registered voters, while about 59% of registered voters cast early and Election Day ballots in 2016.
Still, the fact that the state exceeded its entire vote total for the past presidential cycle with hours still to go in an early voting period ending Friday evening — and before millions are likely to cast Election Day ballots — hints at a potential electoral sea change.
For Democrats, anything different is likely positive. The party hasn’t won a state office in Texas since 1994 — the nation’s longest political losing streak — nor seen one of its presidential nominees carry the state since 1976. The party now believes it has a chance to seize control of the state House, flip as many as six congressional seats and a Senate seat.
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President Donald Trump carried Texas against Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 9 points, but that was the smallest margin of Republican presidential victory since 1996.
Texas has the highest share of its registered voters who are either new or infrequent voters of any battleground state, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the political data firm L2. Roughly half of its voters have either never cast a ballot or done so in half or fewer of the elections for which they were eligible.
So far, 36% of Texas’ vote comes from this group of irregular voters. That could bode well for keeping Texas Republican since that’s precisely the cohort Trump’s reelection campaign is trying to appeal to as it looks to expand his conservative base.
Meanwhile, because Texas is one of the few states that maintained its already-strict rules preventing most residents from using mail ballots during the pandemic, some of the lines at in-person early voting locations may reflect it being the only way most voters can cast a ballot before Election Day — further potentially inflating the totals.
Democrats nonetheless point hopefully to areas like Harris County, the state’s largest and home to Houston, where they swept every major election in 2018, to argue that the state is fast becoming more blue. About 1.3 million Harris County voters had cast early ballots so far compared to less than 980,000 in 2016, and the percentage of registered voters countywide voting early had reached about 58% so far, compared to 54% in total early voting four years ago.
RELATED: Harris County early voters surpass total turnout from 2016 general election
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign has for months insisted that Texas, with its 38 electoral votes, is among the traditionally conservative states it is looking to flip — though it has long been more bullish on Arizona. After Fort Worth, Harris, is visiting Houston and the U.S.-Mexico border town of McAllen. Her coming just four days before Election Day means using precious campaign time on the state far later than any major national Democrat in decades.
The news may not be all positive for Democrats, however.
Harris is hitting Hidalgo county, which includes McAllen, where the increase in early voting turnout hasn’t matched other places, like the suburbs of Dallas and Austin. It is part of the Rio Grande Valley, the economic engine of the Texas-Mexico border, with a population about 90% Mexican American and representing one of the state’s youngest and fastest-growing areas.
Not turning out voters there — especially when the rest of the state is shattering records — could spell trouble for Biden. The area is solidly Democratic, even if many of its Latino voters tend to be slightly more conservative than some of their counterparts in other parts of the country.
It’s also been among the hardest hit areas in the nation by the coronavirus and has seen new cases soar in recent weeks as they have in many parts of the country.
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“They were forced to place bodies in refrigerated FEMA trailers because they ran out of room in the morgues and the funeral homes,” said Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman and Democratic presidential candidate who came within 3 percentage points of upsetting Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 — and might have do so had he turned out more Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley.
“This part of Texas has borne witness to the cruelty of the Trump administration and the incompetence of his leadership,” O’Rourke added.
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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Angeliki Kastanis in Los Angeles and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.