How does 477,455 sound? That’s about 125,000 more than voted early in 2004, and almost twice as many as voted early in 2000.
A couple of other numbers to keep in mind: There are about 1.2 million registered voters in Dallas County. In 2004, turnout was 58 percent, and half voted early. If that pattern holds, we’ll have 80 percent turnout tomorrow. I’m not sure anyone, anywhere, has ever had 80 percent turnout. More realistically, I think we can expect early voting this year to account for about two-thirds of the total. Even then, we’d get close to 60 percent turnout, which is about what the national projections are.
Who will all these people help? The county Democrats think it’s going to be them, though their projections on Friday in the Observer are less than the number who actually voted. On the other hand, as I have noted, early voters in Dallas County traditionally favor Republicans.
Finally, after the jump, a few fun facts about just how many people voted early, which you can share if you have to stand in line tomorrow to vote.
• We had 12 days of early voting, which means some 40,000 people voted early each day.
• More people voted early in two days, based on the average, than voted in the Trinity election last fall.
• On election day in May 2007, about 41,000 people voted for mayor, or the one-day early average this time.
• My favorite number: Mayor Park Cities received around 70,000 votes in the first round and the run-off when he was elected 18 months ago. By comparison, that’s fewer votes than in the top three early voting locations.
All of which means there is a fair amount of interest in this election.
Comments