Sign up for the We the Texans newsletter to receive biweekly updates on our year-long initiative dedicated to strengthening civic engagement and telling the story of how democracy is lived in Texas.

Fewer Texans — particularly in the state’s largest cities — voted early this year compared to 2020, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of state data.

More than 9 million Texans voted in person during the two weeks of early voting or returned their absentee ballots by Nov. 1, according to state data. This represents 48.6% of all registered voters. In 2020, 9.7 million, or 57.2% of registered voters, went to the polls or cast their ballot during early voting.

This lag is largely attributed to a dramatic drop in mail voting. Approximately 8.7 million Texans voted early in 2020 and 2024. However, 937,870 Texans voted absentee in 2020, while 347,652 voted absentee this year.

Current data is not definitive and may be incomplete. Counties can accept mail-in ballots until Wednesday. And each county is responsible for self-reporting, and in some cases, counties aren’t sharing their numbers or reporting their data late. And a direct comparison to early voting through 2020 comes with a major caveat. Texans had three weeks to vote in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and only two weeks this year. And four years ago, there was also more emphasis on mail-in voting.

Election day is Tuesday.

Despite the lag in turnout, the total number of Texans who voted is staggering. Aside from 2020, more people have already voted than the total number of people who voted in any previous presidential election, according to veteran consultant Derek Ryan who publishes a must-read report on early voting.

Four years ago, more than 11 million Texas people voted, a record for a state that has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the United States.

Democratic turnout appears to have lagged throughout the early voting period, a trend first noticed during the election period. first three days of early voting.

Harris County Democratic Chairman Mike Doyle said turnout was good, but it’s not shocking that the county had less turnout this year than in 2020 due to the pandemic and the additional week of voting. Harris County, which includes Houston, is the most populous county in the state.

“This means we have ambitious goals for tomorrow,” Doyle said. “But we have been taking to the streets for a very long time.”

Doyle is cautiously optimistic and said a good day for Democrats would be around 300,000 voters. He added that they expect about half a million more voters in Harris County on Election Day.

Democrats were hoping to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz this year, the last attempt to end their decades-long losing streak in statewide elections. Texas’ rural and suburban counties have long been Republican strongholds that vote at higher rates than the state’s urban centers like Dallas, Austin and Houston.

Ryan, an adviser to GOP campaigns, said Democrats would need to see increased turnout in the five most populous counties on Election Day to win a statewide election.

“President Biden got 59% in these five counties four years ago, but only got 25% of the vote in the most rural county in the state,” Ryan said.

On Monday, 58 solid red counties and six border counties broke their 2020 turnout record. Zapata County, home to about 8,000 residents south of Laredo, saw the largest increase in turnout: 14 percentage points higher. percentage.

No fast-moving counties, like Colin in North Texas, nor any large blue counties, like Travis or Bexar, outperformed their 2020 turnout rates. In fact, the state’s largest counties all experienced a similar drop in their participation rate, between 10 and 12 percentage points.

Solid Republican counties nearly matched their 2020 early vote totals, which could explain the trend where Republicans appear to vote earlier than Democrats, based on their voting history.

This is something of a reversal from 2020, when former President Donald Trump questioned the process and encouraged his voters to go to the polls only on Election Day. According to Ryan’s tracking, 2.5 million voters who cast ballots during the two weeks of early voting have already voted in a Republican primary. That compares to 1.6 million voters who participated in a Democratic primary. Texas does not track voter registration by party. Using voting history in political party primaries provides a proxy in general elections.

“The electorate so far this cycle looks a lot like it did in 2020,” Ryan said.