The Early Crowd

More on this in my weekend pontificating, but I was among the early voting herd today. Somehow, I couldn't talk the boss into going to vote three blocks away downtown, but he had no problem being convinced by others to go to Ripley House over on the East End. To no amount of my own surprise, there was a line there. I lost track of time - I want to say we were in line for about 30 minutes or so. The real travesty of it all was that there were seven machines not being used out of a small room full of about 16 functioning machines.

My task was pretty easy this time around, though: Chris Bell + Straight Dem - Al Green.

Naturally, I urge everyone to follow that pattern to the maximum extent possible.

From the Chron's summary:

The combined figure of 733,771 equals about 37 percent of the county's registered voters and for the first time may be higher than the number who vote on Election Day for the offices of president, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and several local positions.

A few more early votes may be added later to Friday's total; lines were so long at the Lone Star College site on Tomball Parkway in north Harris County and at other locations that voting was extended past 9 p.m. to accommodate voters who arrived by the 7 p.m. deadline, officials said.

37% turnout already is beyond impressive. It remains to be seen which patterns hold true to form and which change. I've got to think we get a turnout possibly north of 65% countywide, which compares to 2004's 58%. That would represent approximately half of voters getting out early and half voting on E-day. Again, for the sake of comparison, 2004 saw 42% of the vote cast early.

The end result isn't necessarily earth-shatteringly different once you get beyond the impressive interest in this overall political cycle. What it translates to in terms of Dem voters changing their patterns, I think, is of the most significance for down-ballot races. Maybe it's the paranoia blogging, but I'm more than a little nervous about some differences we might see in those patterns. Once the early numbers are posted online, I think we might have a fairly significant tale of the tape right there. We may be in some uncharted water on the early interpretation of numbers, but at the end of the day, water still has the same properties whether it's charted or not.