More than 4.5 million Texans cast ballots during the first seven days of early voting, with Democrats holding an early advantage in what is shaping up to be one of the state’s most competitive statewide elections in a generation, according to Derek Ryan of Ryan Data and Research.<\/p>\n
From the U.S. Senate to local county offices, Texans are casting ballots in the midterm election, and an estimated 10 million voters could ultimately participate, which would set a record.<\/p>\n
Turnout from Monday through Sunday was up more than 6% compared with previous years, Ryan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the story over those first seven days is the surge in Democrats voting in those first few days compared to their Republican counterparts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Democrats hold a 115,000-vote advantage over Republicans among those who have already cast ballots. At the same point in the last midterm election, Texas Republicans had a 400,000-vote advantage.<\/p>\n
That shift puts Democrats in a stronger position at this stage of the race than they have been in recent memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, all the way down to dog catcher. You know, if you’re a Republican, you need to be out there hitting the doors, calling, you know, getting them to show up,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n
The early voting numbers also show some changes in who is turning out.<\/p>\n
Slightly more women have voted than men, which follows the usual turnout pattern. But slightly more voters younger than 45 are casting ballots compared with the last midterm election.<\/p>\n
Hispanic voters are also turning out at a rate roughly 3% higher than four years ago. Young and diverse voters in Texas’ major cities have already been casting ballots.<\/p>\n
Those trends give Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico a slight advantage heading into the final days of early voting and Election Day.<\/p>\n
But a significant pool of Republican voters remains.<\/p>\n
Ryan said 2 million reliable Republican primary voters have not yet voted. Whether those voters turn out could determine if Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton can overcome the Democratic advantage or if Democrats can maintain their lead.<\/p>\n
The close early numbers could mean the outcome will not become clear quickly on Election Day.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeans probably a very long night of waiting on election returns next Tuesday,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n
Another major unknown is what happens with Texans who are registered but have no history of actually casting a ballot. As many as 5 million Texans could fall into that category. They are eligible to vote, but are considered unlikely to participate in this election.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC DFW. AI tools helped convert the story into a digital article, and an NBC DFW journalist edited it again before publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 4.5 million Texans cast ballots during the first seven days of early voting, with Democrats holding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6288,8817,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-478639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-decision-2026","tag-lone-star-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}