Early Voting Ends in Texas. It’s Down to the Wire

Over the last couple of weeks, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been waging fierce advertising campaigns here in Texas. Not a day will go by when I don’t hear ads for either presidential candidate over my radio or see bumper stickers in the city streets of Houston.

While, Obama has largely been playing catch up and making serious gains in Clinton’s start of the year double digit lead, Clinton has been trying to stave off any momentum he might have built. The latest slew of polls shows this race is virtually even.

However, larger than expected early vote turnout has reached historical levels across Texas and it will be no surprise if come March 4th the lines are long and equally unprecedented turn out is reported. This news bodes well for Democrats in Texas, as Ian noted, and it also should cause a healthy dose of skepticism when trying to interpret polls. This is because polls are only as good as their sample sizes and it looks like their power to infer is diminishing as the number of actual voters grows far higher than expected.

I am certainly noticing a trend of Latinos to be staunchly behind Hillary here in Texas. While Obama, has made significant gains in her voting base, I don’t see that being the case here in Texas. I wouldn’t be surprised come Tuesday night if Clinton can claim a victory, but it maybe close (perhaps 5 points).

Update

For a completely opposite view point you can read the pro-Obama spin piece at dkos.  I have to say their argument for an Obama victory based on high turn out deserves some attention. I disagree with their assessment that high turn out helps Obama win. I clearly think quite the opposite. As they noted, Obama outperformed polls in places where Blacks were of substantial size of the turnout (GA, SC) but here in Texas Latinos are staunchly behind Clinton.

In the 2004 primaries, the number of registered Latinos was about 24% vs. 21% for Blacks. But, if turn out is growing as large as is being reported, then the sheer volume of Latinos versus Blacks (8.3 MM vs 2.7 MM - as per Texas 2006 census) clearly suggests they will make up a great portion on these increased voters. That being said I would bet that with upwards of 70% support in the Latino groups is going to be heavily favoring Clinton.

Alas we shall see come Tuesday.

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