Some good news for a change. [View all]
OK...Only Day One on these stats...but but but...
Of the 51,249 Texans who cast ballots Tuesday on the first day of early voting, more than half voted in the Democratic primary.
The total number of voters from the 15 counties with the most people registered is high for a midterm year.
In Dallas County, 4,023 people voted in the Democratic primary, an increase over the 2,587 people who voted in 2014 and the 2,908 in 2016.
(One must remember Dallas County is blue, and has been for a long while. Like Austin. And Houston. And San Antonio. We can't do much about the rubes in the sticks. But this is a really good trend for not only Dallas but Texas as a whole.)
Political experts attribute much of Texas' increased voter turnout as a reaction to the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, as well as the state's eight open congressional seats.
"In general, there seems to be more energy, largely stemming from people's reactions to President Trump and a lot of Democrat-leaning groups trying to get people out and organized," said Robert Lowry, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "It's maybe more Democrats than Republicans, but people who oppose him and don't like the results of the election and can't believe he won, [saying] 'We obviously can't vote against him this time but we can try to get more Democrats elected to respond to him.'"
From the Dallas Morning News.
If we can get this done in Texas...boy oh boy.