Austin Turns Out, Smoothly
November 4th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
If Democrats want to retake the Texas House tonight, they likely will have to win both of Travis County’s hotly contested races — in which incumbents Donna Howard and Valinda Bolton are trying to stave off GOP challengers.
So Travis County Democrats have kicked their turnout efforts into high gear.
“We’ve mostly been doing phone bank calls,” said Matt Glazer, head of communications for the Travis County Democrats, “going to door-to-door, encouraging people to come vote. We also have people outside polling places, distributing information on down-ballot candidates so people vote for them.”
Glazer said that Travis Democrats were focusing their turnout efforts “county-wide.” They aim to get out newly registered Democrats who haven’t voted before, and to remind those who voted in the 2008 presidential primary that there are important local races going on as well.
Glazer said the election seemed to be going off more or less without any major hitches, despite the fact that officials were estimating that anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 more people would be voting today than normal.
That’s been helped by high levels of early turnout in Travis, as in the rest of Texas. Those early turnout numbers, according to an analysis today, are very encouraging for Democrats. Of the nearly 300,000 early voters in Travis, 43 percent had a “Democratic only” voting history, compared with just 11 percent “Republican only” — and 15 percent Green. Sixteen percent of Travis’ early voters were new to the process — another good sign for the Dems.
“The Travis County Election Board has done an awesome job,” Glazer said. “Despite the record turnout, there really haven’t been any problems.”
