Texas Early Voting Final: 7.7 Million Ballots In, Dallas County at 624,403 and Tarrant at 587,309

Early voting is over, and the final count is bigger than the interim ones. The Texas Secretary of State's file through the close of early voting on October 30 records 7,716,859 ballots cast early statewide — 41% of registered voters — in an early-voting period that ran October 19 to 30. In the Metroplex, Dallas County cast 624,403 early ballots, 42% of its 1,493,955 registered voters, and Tarrant County cast 587,309, which is 48% of its 1,228,367 registered voters — the highest turnout rate of the big urban counties in this file. Harris County cast the most ballots in raw terms, 1,074,580 at 39%. Two independent trackers of the same state file differ by 139 ballots statewide; the county lines agree exactly.

The shape of the vote is lopsided toward the polling place. Of the ballots in the state file, 96.6% were cast in person and 3.4% by mail — 260,343 mail ballots — which fits Texas law: voting by mail requires a reason, such as being 65 or older or away from the county. All 254 Texas counties had reported by the close. And one discipline note the numbers themselves enforce: Texas does not register voters by party, so these counts say how many people voted, and nothing at all about how they voted. Any claim about which side the early vote favors is a model, not a count.

What it means for Tuesday is arithmetic. With 41% of Texas already in, Election Day decides the rest in the counties that turn out — and in the Metroplex, Tarrant's 48% early rate against Dallas's 42% says the west side of the region has set the pace its east side has to match at the polls between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Tuesday. The statewide races this turnout feeds — a Senate contest polling inside the margin of error among them — will be counted from a base that is already historically large for a midterm.