Tens of thousands of El Pasoans will head to the polls Tuesday, Nov. 3, to close out a record-smashing year for midterm election voting.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at any of the more than 120 vote centers throughout El Paso County. The results of early voting will be made available at 7 p.m., with Election Day results released throughout the night.
More than 164,000 El Paso County residents cast ballots during early voting, the highest number – by far – ever recorded for a midterm election. Turnout during the March Democratic and Republican primary elections also set a record for elections held in the middle of a presidential term.
The previous highest early voting turnout for an El Paso midterm election was in 2018, when El Pasoan Beto O’Rourke was the Democratic nominee for Senate.
An Election Day turnout of 40,000 will take El Paso County past its all-time record for total turnout in a midterm election, which was 203,000 in 2018. Election Day turnout that year was 65,000; it was 62,000 in 2022.
This year’s early voting turnout was 18% higher than that previous record, and 60% more than the last midterm election in 2022.
A key contributor to the record turnout was the number of people casting ballots who didn’t vote in other recent elections.
One in every six early voters didn’t cast a ballot in El Paso in the last presidential election in 2024, according to an El Paso Matters analysis of county voting data. More than one out of every three early voters this year didn’t vote in El Paso during the 2022 midterm election in.
In many other ways, the early voting electorate was typical for an El Paso election – just with larger numbers.
More than 55% of early voters were women, even though women make up only 51% of registered voters. That is similar to early voting sex breakdowns in prior elections.
The turnout gap between women and men was most pronounced among voters ages 18-29, who were responsible for 61% of all early votes cast by that group.
As has long been the case, older El Pasoans were the likeliest to go to the polls for early voting. Two-thirds of early voters were 45 or older.
More than 30% of the nearly 541,000 registered voters in El Paso County cast early ballots in this election. That’s high by El Paso’s historic turnout pattern, but is lowest among Texas’ 10 most populous counties, according to state data. That also is typical for statewide elections.
Almost half of all El Paso County registered voters 65 and older cast early ballots, the El Paso Matters analysis of election data showed. The lower the age group, the lower the percentage of registered voters casting ballots. Fewer than one in five registered El Pasoans younger than 30 cast early votes.
El Paso Democrats enter Election Day with a distinct advantage over Republicans, which is in line with historic trends going back decades.
Just over half of early voters skipped the March 3 Democratic and Republican primary elections. But among the 47% of early voters who did vote in primaries, Democrats had a 3 to 1 advantage – a gap of more than 38,000 votes.
Voting in a primary doesn’t mean the person will only vote for that party in a general election. Texas eliminated straight-ticket voting after 2018. But in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, every Democratic candidate on the countywide ballot won at least 58% of the vote, with most several points higher.
The post Analysis: Who voted early in El Paso? Record turnout shows familiar patterns appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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