https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2008-10-24/694384/

Are Dems Already Outvoting Republicans?

By Lee Nichols, October 24, 2008, 4:17pm, Newsdesk

Are the Democrats already winning? Well, if you are a Democrat, you certainly shouldn’t take anything for granted (meaning, if you haven’t voted yet, get out there and do so), but there are rumblings afoot that Dems are leading the early voting.

Obviously, there’s no way to know for sure until early voting totals are released at 7pm on Nov. 4, but Harris County Democratic Party Chair Gerry Birnberg told the Stateman that he has reason to believe that, based on a study of early voters who also participated in the March party primaries, Dems are currently outvoting Republicans there by about 3:1.

But it’s not just Democrats saying that. In an e-mail to supporters of Republican Austin Congressman Michael McCaul – who’s in a tight fight with Democrat Larry Joe Doherty – campaign chairman Jack Ladd, Jr. wrote:

I wish that I could email you under better circumstances, but today we received shocking news. After receiving numbers from the Travis and Harris County elections offices, we have determined that Democrats are out-voting Republicans 2:1 in both major counties in Congressman McCaul’s district. This is based off of voters that have voted with primary history. This is very bad news.

The two “major counties” to which he refers are Travis and Harris.

And over at Quorum Report, Harvey Kronberg writes:

A reliable Republican source tells QR that a computer analysis of early voting in Harris County indicates that Democrats have had a very good first two days of early voting.
By matching up early voters with their primary histories, our source tells us that Democrats outvoted Republicans 2.6 to 1 on the first day of early voting and 2.4 to 1 on day 2.

I asked Travis County Democratic Party Chair Andy Brown this afternoon if he had any data of his own that matched those numbers.

“There’s no way to know that for sure because we don’t really know what people choose until after the votes are counted,” Brown said, “but it does look like people with a Democratic history are voting in record numbers in Travis County. With good reason. I think Democrats and people with Republican histories are realizing where our country has gone the past eight years, and they don’t like it, and we’re seeing the results of that this week.”