10.22.08
Early voting continues to amaze
UPDATE: This post won’t be updated as new daily totals arrive. Instead, a new page has been added. The link is located in the upper right corner of the site template.
Although the totals for the second day aren’t available yet, we know it is going to be around 8,000 again. UPDATE: Tuesday’s turnout was 8,291. Here’s a graph showing where we stand relative to the last three general election early voting periods (2002, 2004 and 2006). The vertical scale is the percentage of registered voters (RVs) that showed up on a given day of early voting. This view takes away the growth of Williamson county’s population. Had we looked at this in terms of number of voters it would have been even more dramatic, but probably less predictive of what we can expect over the next 10 days.
The first two days’ turnout rates are running about 25% higher than in 2004. If we maintain that through October 31, we will see a total early voting turnout of 48.5%. Estimates for final election turnout range from 75 to 80 percent. That would mean there will be between 64000 and 75000 voters casting ballots on November 4. That is significant, because it still exceeds the largest single day turnout ever recorded in Williamson county, 51,540 voters on November 2, 2004.