Primary Update: Slow Crawl Speeds Up

Grab your polling cards: Early voting for the May 29 primary ends today. Early on, it was pretty clear that the high-stakes GOP races in South-West Travis County were motivating voters. Now Democrats seem to have woken up to the big fights within their own party ranks.

OK, here's the important bit: Early voting ends tonight, May 25, at 6pm at most locations. However, the County Clerk’s office, 5501 Airport will be open until 7pm. You can find a full list of early voting locations here and, of course, this is only early voting: You still have election day to go.

So far, only 27,359 people, equal to 4.6% of registered voters in Travis have turned out or returned their postal ballot. Come on, people! That's barely a quarter of the capacity of the Darrell K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium. Are you really saying that the democratic process is less important than the home game against the New Mexico Lobos?

Here's the party-by-party, day-by-day breakdown:

Primary	Democrats	Republicans	Total
May 14	1,517	1,700	3,217
May 15	839	934	1,773
May 16	960	1,116	2,076
May 17	1,067	1,241	2,308
May 18	1,094	1,404	2,498
May 19	1,102	969	2,071
May 20	417	402	819
May 21	1,262	1,306	2,568
May 22	1,441	1,366	2,807
May 23	1,590	1,596	3,186
May 24	2,191	1,845	4,036
Total To Date	13,480	13,879	27,359
Registered Voters	2.26%	2.33%	4.6%

In the first four days, the GOP turnout was outpacing the Dems dramatically and consistently, and it was embarrassingly low for both parties. There are a lot of reasons that people suspect are to blame. Back-to-back city and primary elections: Confusion over rescheduling; And, equally, confusion caused by redistricting, as people scramble to work out who exactly represents them and what races they will be voting in. However, there has been a definite uptick in both races, and even though the Dem turnout lags overall, there is obviously some renewed energy, with Dem turnout beating GOP participation on four of the last six days.

Since anyone can vote in any of the early voting locations, it makes it very hard to detect any major geographic trends. However, there have been big boosts for both parties to the South and at the Ben Hur Shriners Hall.

On the positive side, Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said she expects a big push today. She said, "We won’t be surprised to see two to three times the number of votes cast on the final day of Early Voting compared to the first days of the period."