The Texan Podcast - Special Edition Podcast: 2022 Early Voter Turnout, GOP Chances in South Texas, and Likelihood of the Lone Star Turning Blue

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Want to support reporting on Texas politics that doesn’t include the spin? Subscribe at https://thetexan.news/subscribe/  This week, Republican consultant and data cruncher Derek Ryan joined The Texan’s senior editor McKenzie Taylor to discuss the early voter turnout in the 2022 midterm elections. Derek provided insight into who exactly showed up to vote, how close Texas is to turning blue, the urban vs. rural divide, and the trends in voting by mail compared to previous elections. Enjoy this content? Be sure to subscribe for similar interviews and The Texan’s Weekly Roundup — a podcast released every Friday that brings you the latest news in Texas politics.

Howdy, howdy, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here. Today I spoke with Republican political consultant and data cruncher Derek Ryan. We chatted all things voter turnout and election data, and Derek gave us insight into who exactly has shown up to vote so far, how close Texas is to turning blue, the urban versus rural divide, and whether some folks are still set on voting by mail. Folks, make sure to subscribe to The Texan to gain access to all of our election coverage, results, and information. We so appreciate you tuning in and enjoy this episode. I'm here with Derek Ryan today. Derek, thank you so much for joining

The Texan's podcast. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. I'd love if first off you could give a quick introduction to who you are, what you do in the world of Texas politics. It's a crazy world and so many Data and Research, where I pretty much have a list of all registered voters in the state of Texas and have all sorts of information about those registered voters that I use to help candidates, local parties, PACs, you know, get out the vote in primary elections and general elections. Which is largely what we're going to be talking about today is the breakdown of who's turned out in Texas so far. General trends, I really am appreciative of you coming on. Folks, if you aren't familiar with Derek's work, I'd encourage one, follow him on Twitter. He has a lot of great

information that he'll post there. But also there's a newsletter that goes out. I know I look forward to his newsletters every election where he sends out information about really in-depth information about who's come out so far, the trends we're seeing at the polls. It's fascinating information. And we'll answer a lot of those questions today. Disclaimer, we are recording on the Friday, the last day of early voting. So we're going with the most recent numbers as to this time of recording. Derek, real fast, tell us a little bit about how you get your data. So basically, the list of registered voters in the state of Texas is public record. So anybody could put in a request with their county

office or the Texas Secretary of State and get a list of all of the registered voters. And then which elections people participate in is also public information. So once early voting starts, the counties provide a list of everyone who's voted early the previous day. And what I do is I take that information and match it back to the list of registered voters and look at things like age, gender, past primary election history, things like that, so that we can kind of gauge maybe what's happening during early voting. Generally speaking, what is the difference in how midterms and presidential elections shake out with turnout? And are we seeing indicators that those trends are

just as prevalent in this year's election? So obviously, presidential elections, the turnout is significantly higher than it would be in the midterm. I think that a lot of people actually, before early voting started, were kind of under the impression that turnout in Texas might be higher than a normal midterm election, higher than 2018, but still slightly under what it was in 2020. I talked to several polling firms and things like that, just running that by them. And they said, yeah, I think that it's quite possible that we could see turnout not at presidential levels, but near presidential levels. And actually, it seems that that hasn't come to fruition. Very interesting. So, so far, based on what we know, as of this point, Friday afternoon, who is coming to the polls in Texas?

So through Thursday, we've had about 4.7 million people in the state vote. That's about 27% turnout rate. And then when you look at it by previous primary election history, about 42% of early voters have voted in a previous Republican primary compared with 29% who have voted in a previous Democrat primary. And then you've got the remainder, 28%, that they may vote in general elections, but they haven't necessarily voted in a Republican or a Democrat primary. Very interesting. Was that expected? Is that kind of where we thought that voters would be coming in terms of party affiliation, in terms of the percentage of those of those coming to the polls on either side of the aisle? Is that what we expected? I think that it's a little bit better than expected for Republicans. 2018, the breakdown was there were a significant higher percentage of the vote that were cast by people with no primary history.

For the entire 2018 election, 46 percent of the votes, nearly half, were cast by people with no primary history. So, you know, like I said, right now, they're sitting at about 28% of all votes cast. So just from a pure primary perspective, Republicans are doing, I think, better than they were four years ago. Why are folks without that primary history, that primary election voting history, significant voters? Yeah, I think that, well, in Texas, from a raw vote standpoint, there are a significant more, significantly more Republican primary voters. You know, there are about 2.5 million people that are registered voters that have previous Republican primary history compared to about, I want to say, 1.8 million Democrat primary voters. So if we got all of

those people turned out, we obviously have a nice margin there. But then we have to take into consideration those that don't have primary history. And really, those are the, you know, what we in the business call the swing voters in the, you know, they may vote. There's a portion of them that vote Republican all the time. But this is also the group that may have voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but are now deciding to vote Republican this go around. And when it comes to primary voters, this may be explaining something very elementary and our listeners may already know this. But folks, when you have a Republican primary voter that has cast their ballot, the assumption is that they voted Republican. And if it's a Democrat primary voter, the assumption is that they voted for the Democrat on the ballot. So that is an indicator of potentially who's come to the polls, what the final percentage would be on election day for either party. Is that correct,

Derek? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that point up. Obviously, Texas is an open primary state. So there are on occasions, times when there are Democrats that will come vote in the Republican primary. And conversely, there are Republicans that can go vote in the Democrat primary. But typically, it's probably about 5% of all primary voters are cross party voters. So I think it is a good assumption that if somebody voted in the Republican primary in March, that, you know, at least 95% of those people are likely voting for the Republican nominees in November. Very interesting. So what meaningful effects did redistricting specifically have on the maps this election?

And what might that mean for the folks who are coming to the polls? Sure. So redistricting always plays a part in turnout. You know, one, at the beginning of the 10-year period, there aren't as many competitive races, per se. So turnout will drop unless there's a competitive congressional race or competitive state house race. So there aren't as many competitive district races as there were two years or even four years ago. So that plays a role. Also, people have new representation that they may not necessarily know. They've seen the same names in some cases on the ballot for 10 years now. And then suddenly they're in a new district and know absolutely nothing about the people running because they're in this new district. And then thirdly, polling

locations, you know, polling locations could possibly change. Somebody that's voted in the same place for years and years, you know, it's possible that their voting locations have changed because of redistricting. And this is an entirely different landscape than say another midterm like 2018, right? Where we had Republican in the White House, we had, I believe it was two state Senate seats and 12 state house seats that flipped from Republican to Democrat. And that had in large part was due to the fact that in midterms, it is very traditional that the party in power in the White House will face a lot of down ballot losses and just lessened turnout. It's kind of a cycle that happens each and every time that we see a midterm come along. But in the big picture, in the future, folks, especially on

the Republican side, are concerned about Texas turning blue. Democrats have certainly shown a lot of fervor and motivation in trying to turn out their voters and just convince folks who may not show up at the ballot box traditionally to show up in the big picture. How close is Texas to turning blue? I've been in politics for 20 years now, and to hear some people talk uh texas is turning blue this year and texas is turning blue next year i've heard that for 20 years now and uh it it's uh it seems like a cycle is you know in odd number years the the polls come out and say, oh, the Democrats have a chance to win Texas. And then we get a little bit closer to the election and then the polls say, oh, not so fast.

Republicans are up by eight or nine points. So I think that we're probably a ways away from it turning blue or even maybe even being seriously, seriously competitive. For one, there's not really a farm team on the Democrat side as far as potential statewide candidates. You know, you've got recycled candidate Beto O'Rourke. And then other than that, it's really people that your average voters never even heard their name before. So that plays a role in it, certainly. And the fact that Republicans are now starting to gain traction in the Hispanic community and in South Texas. That's definitely going to help Republicans this cycle and cycles moving forward. Then the other thing is, before President Trump was on the ballot, Texas was probably about a 58% Republican state. And so, you know, President Trump has been

on the ballot or in the discussion for 2016, 18, 20, and still, you know, kind of on people's minds in 2022. So I think it's difficult to say if, you know, Texas is really still a 58% state because Trump was so polarizing that that might have cost a couple of percentage points. So we still have to wait and see, but I'm fairly confident that it's not happening this year. And I would be shocked if it happened in 2024. So we're talking at least four years from now. Well, in a lot of the areas, specifically in Texas, where we saw Republicans lose ground when Trump was on the ballot, are those suburban areas, right? I mean, the rural areas kind of stayed the same. The urban areas in large part kind of stayed the same, maybe got a little bluer. But the suburban areas were really where a lot of the narrative is that the suburban women, right, were nervous about Trump, maybe

didn't like his rhetoric, were looking for something a little bit more comfortable than a Trump presidency, and therefore potentially flipped from voting traditionally Republican to being, you know, for the Democrat candidate on the ballot for president. Are we seeing inroads made in those suburban areas for Republicans? Is that something that we should expect going forward? What do you think with the ground that can be made up in those areas for Republicans might look like? You know, so right now, the suburban areas actually look really, I think, really good for us. And, you know, even some of the urban areas, Harris County, which we've seen, which is the Houston area. You know, we took major losses in 2018.

And, you know, Ed Emmett, the county judge, real popular Republican for years down there, got defeated. In 2020, we saw another round of losses in Harris County. And right now, it's looking actually pretty competitive. The same goes for like Tarrant County, which is the Fort Worth area. Beto won Tarrant County, which is the Fort Worth area, Beto won Tarrant County in 2018. I think that in 2020, Joe Biden won the county, but John Cornyn won the county as well. So there's been a push by Democrats to kind of try to change Tarrant County from red to blue. But it's looking really, really good too.

And so then when you look at the suburban areas right now, it's, we seem to be doing okay. But again, there's still, you know, today's early voters and election early voters to where, you know, things could change significantly. I'm going to ask you about polling and then I'm going to circle back to Harris County because I do want to talk specifically about Harris County. How accurate is polling? We talk a lot at the Texan about polls. We certainly like to give our listeners and readers an indication of where voters might be leaning in one way or another because they can be helpful. They're not the end-all be-all at the same time though. And I think voters have a lot of distrust in polling as as they saw specifically in 2020 and 2016, a lot of polls that came out that

did not end up being accurate to what actually took place at the ballot box. In your opinion, as you've worked in this industry, you worked with polls, you obviously have a finger on the pulse of voter turnout and voter data. What can we take to the bank when it comes to reading a poll or reading about a poll in the news? Sure. So, you know, disclaimer, I'm not a pollster. You know, like I said at the beginning, I just deal with the lists of registered voters, which the pollsters actually use. But I don't think you can pay me enough to be a pollster these days. For starters, with so many people dropping their landlines and only having a mobile number, it's gotten more expensive to try and get in touch with people. As software advances, my iPhone, I can block unknown numbers. So I'm not dealing with unknown phone calls. And so that makes it even tougher for pollsters to get in touch with people, especially younger voters for starters, you know, ignore the press release that they put out with it and go straight to the data and look to see, OK, are they did they survey adults?

Did they survey registered voters? Did they survey likely voters? If they're surveying adults, I hate to say it, but it's probably a garbage poll this close to an election. If you're surveying adults, there's going to be at least 20% in that group that aren't even registered to vote. So they won't even have the ability to show up. When you look at a registered vote, registered voter poll, you know, it might be a little bit more accurate. But there again, there's still going to be possibly 30 or 40 percent of those people that don't actually show up. So you want to see who they surveyed. But then you also want to see what breakdown politically they contacted. You can oversample on Democrats versus Republicans, and you'll obviously get a pro-Democrat survey that way. So you have to be careful to make sure that the demographics of political age, gender, geography, all are similar to what you expect would actually show up to vote.

Circling back to Harris County, it's a fascinating county for many reasons. In 2018, there were just severe losses for republicans and specifically in judicial races in harris county it was an absolute slaughter for republicans and an absolute you know world series win for democrats this year we have judge lena hildago who is embattled have facing many controversies in her area with rising crime there's just a lot of difficulty there in Harris County for her in her reelection bid, facing a Republican, Alex DelMoral-Miller, who has a lot of momentum in a lot of ways. And there have even been a couple of polls

that have come out that show either the margin to be very small and within the margin of error, or potentially morale leading, which would be shocking in some ways to see a Republican take Harris County in that regard. Additionally, with Beto O'Rourke on the ballot and Governor Abbott going to bat against this candidate who is very familiar to Texas voters now and has a very energized campaign that is funded very well. But regardless, there are only so many Democrat voters in Texas and in Harris County, the polls are not looking particularly favorable in terms for Beto O'Rourke in the ways that it should if he wants to have a big take home on election day and show up big against the governor.

How does that break down? What are we seeing in Harris County? There's just a lot of complications there with potential crossover voters, maybe Democrats who would vote for Beto, but might vote for the Republican in the county judge race. What are you seeing there in Harris County in terms of turnout? Yeah, so in 2018, O'Rourke won with 58% of the vote in Harris County. So, you know, it wasn't even really a close race but you know you the voters in harris county you know they're watching the news it seems like every other day there's a story about somebody that was uh out on bond uh you know was arrested for serious crime And so when you're inundated with stories like this, the possibility of crossover voting increases because people perceive that the area isn't safe. Right now, I'd put this neck and neck through the people that have voted early.

And turnout's down. And I think that when turnout's down, it probably helps Republican candidates even more because the Republican primary vote has that much more power when turnout's down, you know, so right now I've got, uh, it probably it's 46% Republican, 45%, uh, Democrat. And then the remainder, you know, we're not really sure how those people, uh, align politically. In terms of turnout in the rural versus urban areas of the state, which is a lot of the story of Texas elections is that rural versus urban divide. And that's where I'm talking about specifically with Beto. He needs to have a very strong turnout in Harris County in order to show up big time statewide for the governor's race, because these rural areas come out so often, so strong for

Republicans. And the rural areas are what balance out that potential large turnout from the big major cities in Texas. How are we looking in terms of urban versus rural turnout so far this year? Yeah, and I answer that before I do that, though, I'd just like to point out that in 2018, in the top 15 largest counties, Cruz only got 42% of the vote. And then in the remaining 239 counties, he got 69% of the vote. In 2018 and 2020, Republican statewide candidates really had to be pulled across the finish line by rural Texas, because like we said, like we discussed earlier, the urban and suburban areas weren't performing as well for Republicans. It was rural Texas that kind of swooped in and saved the day for our Republican statewides. You know, this go around, it seems like rural Texas is showing up to vote and in some areas higher than the urban and suburban areas, which is really fascinating because in a lot of rural areas,

people prefer to vote on election day versus early voting. If you're in a rural county, there may only be one or two early voting locations in the county seat, and you may live 30 miles, 50 miles away from the county seat. So you're not going to take the time to drive into town to vote early. You're going to wait until there's a polling place at your local church on election day. So the fact that turnout is higher in some rural areas right now, it's really, really good news for Republicans. I'm going to pivot to mail-in ballots, which have been a political lightning rod in the last several years, to say the least, with Democrats advocating broader use and Republicans declaring major

concerns about election fraud. What are we seeing in terms of mail-in ballot use this year versus previous years, specifically after what Republicans call the Election Integrity Act of 2021 was passed? Sure. So ballot by mail used to be a Republican stronghold in Texas. The Republican Party of Texas and some statewide candidates would send out applications for ballot by mail to the strongest Republicans in the state, and we would end up doing really well in mail voting. And in fact, in 2018, about 42% of votes cast by mail were by Republican primary voters compared to 31% by Democratic primary voters. Now let's come to 2022, and only 35% have been cast by Republican primary voters. A lot of Republican voters have decided that the best way to make sure that their vote is secure is to vote in person instead of voting by mail. There are plenty of narratives out there about new movers or folks who may be making their way to Texas from other states like California.

What does the data show about their political affiliation? You know it's we talk about people moving here from California all of the time and I think one of the things to remember about that is sure California is a solid blue state but there are pockets of red around the state and there are people moving from those areas to Texas. You know, there are people moving here from Oklahoma, from Arkansas, you know, there are people moving here from solid red states. So this narrative that new Texans are solidly Democrat is, you know, really not true. And in fact, I think I did an analysis after the 2020 election, and it appeared to me that people new to Texas may have split 55% for Republicans, 45% for Democrats. So, you know, it's a group that Republicans really have the possibility of winning and have won in the past.

Realistically, what can the that or higher in South Texas is going to be a win. have the chance to pick up possibly that congressional district down there from Cuellar. I think we have the possibility of picking up maybe a house seat, a state house seat down there. But I think that, you know, this election, even if we don't pick those up, we could see some trends that say that we're headed in the right direction down there. And this may be a building block election that helps us prepare for 2024 and beyond in South Texas. Very good. Well, Derek, you've been very generous with your time. We so appreciate it. We know that you're crunching numbers up until election day. So thank you for making time to talk with our listeners and kind of explain all the ins and outs of how all this voter data actually affects

the final tallies on election night. We appreciate your time and thank you for joining us. No, thank you for having me. I love everybody that works there and I love the work that y'all put out. So keep up the good work. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. Of course. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at the Texan dot news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support. God bless you and God bless Texas.