‘All-time record of more than 9MILLION have already voted in Texas’ as Trump and Biden battle for the Lone Star state
MORE than 9million people have already voted in Texas as Donald Trump and Joe Biden battle it out for the Lone Star state.
The huge amount of early voters has surpassed the states record high.
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In 2016, when Trump was fighting against Hillary Clinton for the White House, the state reported a total of 8,969,226 votes cast.
However, on Friday it was reported that a total of 9,009,850 votes have already been cast.
Democrats believe they have a shot at winning control of the statehouse, a half-dozen competitive US House races and a Senate seat, not to mention 38 electoral votes that could seal the deal for Biden.
Republicans say Democrats are getting way ahead of themselves as usual, but are also clear-eyed that the final turnout will likely be historic.
Derek Ryan, a GOP data analyst, predicted this week that Texas turnout would likely surpass 12million, or roughly 3million more voters than 2016 — more than the population of neighboring New Mexico.
“It’s hard to say, ‘Yes, if we reach 12 million then Democrats win,’ because you never know,” said Abhi Rahman, a spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party. “But on balance, yes, if we reach 12 million voters we’ll win this election.”
Republicans don’t buy it. In Austin’s fast-growing suburbs, Williamson County went for Trump by 9 percentage points four years ago.
GOP county chairman Steve Armbruster said most of the county’s nearly 370,000 registered voters now have no recent primary history. He feels confident the GOP will win a good chunk of them.
“I haven’t seen any kind of support or excitement or enthusiasm on the Democrat side,” Armbuster said after returning from a local Trump rally on Saturday.
In Texas, the focus is on suburbs where Democrats made significant inroads in 2018. A major battleground is Collin County, outside Dallas, which has more than 1million residents and backed Trump by 17 percentage points in 2016.
Two years later, Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke came within 5 percentage points of winning the booming county during his close but failed US Senate run.
More than half of the county’s voters have already gone to the polls, the highest rate in Texas. The same is true in neighboring Denton County, another traditional GOP stronghold.
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On Saturday, Republican Governor Greg Abbott made a second campaign swing this week through the North Texas area that will be decisive in whether Democrats claim a majority in the Texas House for the first time in 20 years.
In heavily Latino counties along the border, turnout has not been as high as elsewhere.
In Hidalgo County, the percentage of registered voters who’ve already cast a ballot is slightly down from the same point four years ago.