Harris County Red to Blue Update

The signs are good for Harris County Democrats.  Here’s an email I got today from a well-connected local Dem pol:

314,000 citizens have voted in person at the early voting locations.
45,000 citizens have already returned their mail ballots.

That’s a total of almost 360,000 early votes with approximately 28,000 mail in ballots sent out but not returned, yet.

If early voting continues this trend, I estimate that there will be 200,000 to 250,000 additional early votes cast by Friday when early voting ends. The last day is usually a big day, but this year it is on Halloween. Who knows what effect that will have.

All of this could mean over 600,000 early votes out of an expected turnout of 1,300,000 in Harris County. But I also think that if early voting is that high, then the total turnout will be over 1.3 million.

What I hear over and over is that the Dems win on election day, but lose the early voting. If we are close in early voting then . . . .

Also, the Zogby polls that the Chronicle cited this weekend assume that the African American vote will be 20% of the total vote in Harris County. Dick Murray thinks it will be more like 25% which should skew the numbers decidedly towards the Democrats.