As of polls closing on Saturday, 27,189 Travis County residents had cast a ballot in the 2016 primary. At the same time last presidential election year (2012), 13,953 ballots had been received.
This is a 95% increase between presidential election years. Compare that to the annual growth rate of Travis County (4.5 percent from 2012-15) and we have the makings of another high-turnout/high interest year in Austin politics.
Much of the high turnout may be due to a tight race between Sens. Bernie Sanders (S-Vermont) and Hillary Clinton (D-New York), with 18,850 of those voters casting Democratic ballots. Only 8,339 votes were Republican by week's end. With so many candidates dropping out (including Jeb Bush suspending his campaign as the South Carolina primary polls closed) many Republicans may be waiting to see who is left and are planning to vote as late as they can.
Other factors may be highly competitive races down-ballot and an increased interest in early voting (rather than on election day).
According to David Guenthner with the Texas Public Policy Foundation:
"Last Saturday was the sixth day of early voting for the Texas primary. Here's a comparison of Republican turnout in Texas' 15 largest counties during the last three presidential elections:
2008 - 120,233
2012 - 152,573
2016 - 217,834
"In the previous two elections, almost 60% of the early vote has been cast in the second week, and the early votes in Texas' 15 largest counties makes up about 23% of the total vote cast. Is this surge of early voters regular primary voters banking their ballots early, or an influx of new voters to the Republican primary? If it's the latter, we may see some unexpected results in the down-ballot races."
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