TEXAS — Voter turnout in the Lone Star State has, historically speaking, not been anything to brag about. The 2020 general election, however, is a whole new ballgame.
As of Sunday, more than 4 million votes have been counted in Texas. That puts the state in the lead in both number of ballots cast and the total votes as a percentage of 2016 turnout.
Those statistics were compiled by Florida professor Michael McDonald and published by the U.S. Elections Project.
It’s also estimated that at least 34 million people have already voted across the county.
California, the only state with more people than Texas, comes in second with 3 million ballots, and that’s followed by Florida, the country’s third-most populous state, with 2.5 million votes.
In Travis County, home of Austin and where 97% of eligible voters registered in time for the presidential election, 31,946 voted on Monday alone, and as of 10 a.m. Tuesday 7,000 people had already voted.
In Harris County, which is Texas’ most populous county and includes Houston and the surrounding area, more than 100,000 voters came to the polls for four straight days, which works out to an average of 9,000 votes per hour.
The early voting period in Texas continues until Friday, October 30.