At the beginning of 2024, 9 million Texans voted. Here’s how it compares to previous years.

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Fewer Texans voted earlier this year, especially in the state’s largest cities, compared with 2020, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of state data.

More than 9 million Texans either voted in person during the two weeks of early voting or returned their absentee ballots by Nov. 1, according to state data. That’s 48.6% of all registered voters. In 2020, 9.7 million, or 57.2% of registered voters, went to the polls or returned early voting ballots.

This lag is largely due to a sharp decline in mail voting. About 8.7 million Texans voted early in both 2020 and 2024. However, 937,870 Texans voted by mail in 2020, and 347,652 voted by mail this year.

Current data is not conclusive and may be incomplete. Counties can accept mail-in ballots until Wednesday. And each county is responsible for self-reporting, and in some cases, counties don’t report their numbers or report late. And a direct comparison with 2020 early voting requires a serious caveat. Texans had three weeks to vote early in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but just two weeks this year. And four years ago there was more emphasis on voting by mail.

Election day is Tuesday.

Despite the lag in turnout, the total number of Texans who voted was staggering. Beyond 2020, more people have already voted than the total number of people who voted in any previous presidential election, according to veteran consultant Derek Ryan, who publishes a must-read report on early voting.

Four years ago, more than 11 million people voted in Texas, a high for a state that has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the United States.

Democratic turnout appeared to lag throughout the early voting period, a trend first noticed during first three days of early voting.

Harris County Democratic Party Chairman Mike Doyle said turnout was good, but it was not surprising that turnout in the county this year was lower than in 2020 due to the pandemic and an extra week of voting. Harris County, which includes Houston, is the state’s most populous county.

“This means we have ambitious goals for tomorrow,” Doyle said. “But we’ve been on the streets damn hard for a long time.”

Doyle was cautiously optimistic and said a good day for Democrats would be around 300,000 voters. He added that they are expecting approximately half a million additional voters in Harris County on Election Day.

Democrats were hoping to oust U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz this year. last try end a decades-long streak of statewide election defeats. Rural and suburban Texas counties have long been Republican strongholds, voting at higher rates than the state’s urban centers such as Dallas, Austin and Houston.

Ryan, the GOP campaign adviser, said Democrats need to see increased turnout in the five most populous counties on Election Day to win the statewide election.

“President Biden received 59% of the vote in these five counties four years ago, but only received 25% of the vote in the state’s most rural counties,” Ryan said.

As of Monday, 58 red counties and six border counties had broken 2020 turnout records. Zapata County, home to about 8,000 people south of Laredo, saw the biggest increase in turnout: 14 percentage points.

None of the fast-moving counties like Colin County in North Texas or large blue counties like Travis or Bexar topped voter turnout in 2020. In fact, all of the state’s largest counties saw similar declines in turnout, between 10 and 12 percentage points.

Solid Republican counties have nearly matched their early voting rates since 2020, which may explain the trend of Republicans voting earlier than Democrats based on their voting history.

It’s something of a reversal from 2020, when former President Donald Trump questioned the process and urged his voters to go to the polls only on Election Day. According to Ryan’s tracking, 2.5 million voters who cast ballots during the two weeks of early voting had previously voted in the Republican primary. That’s compared to 1.6 million voters who took part in the Democratic primary. Texas does not track voter registration by party. Using voting history in political party primaries provides reliable information during general elections.

“The electorate this cycle looks very similar to what it did in 2020,” Ryan said.