Texas Early Vote Tops 6.83 Million Through Thursday on the County-Inclusive Count; Harris County at 948,979

HOUSTON - Two honest counts of the same Texas early vote now sit about 91,000 ballots apart, and the difference is bookkeeping, not ballots. TexPolls, which folds Harris and Fort Bend counties' own election-office reports into its tracker, counted 6,833,519 early ballots statewide through Thursday, October 29 - the eleventh of the twelve early-voting days - made up of 6,582,652 cast in person and 250,867 returned by mail. That is 35.9 percent of the state's 19,041,684 registered voters. The Texas Secretary of State's own report through the same day shows 6,742,159. TexPolls notes the state's count for eleven counties looked low as of Thursday, and that its county-inclusive method is why its total runs ahead.

Harris County is where the spread lives. On the county-inclusive count, Harris County stands at 948,979 early ballots through Thursday. Inside that figure, the county election office's own in-person count is 909,959 - against 840,910 in the state's file for the same county and the same day. The On Point Politics tracker this station reported at 6 p.m., built from state election office counts via civicAPI, put Harris County at 881,008 on its own tally path. Three counters, three totals, one electorate: the county counting its own vote centers in near-real time, and the state file catching up on its own schedule.

What every counter agrees on is the scale. In-person turnout through Thursday ran at 34.6 percent of registered voters, against 25.2 percent at the same point in 2022 - the midterm record this station has tracked all week, now visible in every methodology. TexPolls carries the standing warning plainly: early ballots are not final totals, reports can be revised, and none of the counts say how anyone voted. Friday's final-day ballots, which closed at 7 p.m., land in the counters over the weekend; Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.