AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas has a record number of registered voters, and they’re hitting the polls at a higher rate than the state has seen in previous mid-term elections.
Voters are having to wait in lines at many polling places across the state. After five days of voting, some of the largest counties in Texas have already surpassed turnout figures from the entire early voting period of the 2014 mid-term.
The question a lot of people have is which candidates will benefit from the higher turnout.
We’re getting a closer look at the numbers through analysis by Ryan Data & Research. The man behind the firm analyzes data for Republican campaigns. Ryan took data from the 15 largest counties and examined the voting history of the people who cast ballots in the first four days of early voting.
The analysis shows more than 35-percent of the people who voted had recently voted in Republican primaries. Nearly 32-percent had voted in recent Democratic primaries.
It’s harder to determine the tendencies of the remaining voters. Nearly a quarter of people who cast early ballots had no history of voting in either party’s primary but had voted in previous general elections. And eight percent had never voted before in Texas.
Early voting turnout is on pace to more than double the numbers from the 2014 election. But, it’s slightly behind what the state saw during the 2016 presidential election.
