Early voting totals will not come close to the turnout during the 2020 presidential election or even the midterm elections of 2018, said Republican strategist Derek Ryan, who distributes a daily analysis of voting trends in the state’s largest counties.

The latest update, released Wednesday afternoon, showed 3.7 million votes had been cast in the upcoming election on Nov. 8. Tallies on the first days of early voting also included the bulk of mail-in ballots. By this point in the 2018 election cycle, 76% of all early votes had been cast.

Ryan says he takes off his partisan hat to crunch the numbers on early voting. Back in late summer, Ryan predicted early voting would be somewhere between 2018 and 2020 totals.

“I initially made some projections based on that thinking — that people are obviously energized on both sides of the political spectrum, and that would drive turnout above normal numbers,” Ryan said. “Now that early voting is amped up, it really seems that turnout is more the average of the midterms in 2014 and 2018.”

Texas has tightened up its election laws since the 2020 presidential election, making fewer exceptions for mail-in ballots and ending most curbside voting. The vote-by-mail portion of the early voting tally is somewhat similar — 10% in 2020 compared to 8% in 2022 — but the overall number of votes is much lower: 250,000 mail-in ballots, compared to 1.1 million in 2020.

Some of that lower turnout in mail-in votes can also be attributed to former President Donald Trump’s message that mail-in ballots are highly susceptible to fraud, Ryan said.

“I think that there is a significant portion of (Trump’s) votes who have taken that to heart and have decided, ‘Well, I’ve voted by mail in previous elections, but Pres. Trump has convinced me that it’s not secure,” Ryan said. “I’m going to go ahead and vote in person this year.”

Another factor Ryan mentions is a point also made by the Spectrum News/Siena College poll: the only statewide Democrat on the ticket with name recognition is Beto O’Rourke. That means fewer people are being motivated to head to the ballot box, even though the margin between candidates in many recent surveys has been in the single or low double digits.

Another finding in the Spectrum News/Siena College poll was that abortion was important to Democrats and younger voters, but maybe not enough to drive them to the ballot box. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade at the end of June.

“I think if the election had been held on July 8, instead of Nov. 8, the abortion issue would probably have caused a significant increase in voter participation,” Ryan said. “But it’s been three months since that opinion, and it feels like there’s been a million news cycles, and other topics have risen to the top.”

Now, looking at the low number of early voters, Ryan speculates abortion may be a top issue for some voters, but those voters already expected to vote in this election.

Other statistics Ryan has gleaned from the early voting tallies:

Ryan can see the recent voting patterns of early voters. To date, 43% had voted for Republicans in the last election. Another 31% had voted for Democrats. And 25% had no voting history;

Early voting and mail-in ballots also lean heavily toward older voters. A total of 71% of those who have cast ballots are over the age of 50;

If past voting history is a measure of what can be expected in local races, Williamson County is still leaning Republican (despite some recent wins by Democrats) and the voting in Dallas County is leaning heavily toward Democrats, a plus for challengers like O’Rourke;

O’Rourke will likely have to lean harder on turnout in Bexar, Dallas and Travis counties because Republicans are highly motivated in Harris County. The race for county judge — between incumbent Democrat Lina Hidalgo and challenger Republican Alexandra Mealer — is contentious, with Mealer outracing Hidalgo by wide margins in the last month.