Who Surges Thanks to Early Voting?

We’re minutes from the polls closing, and early voting totals will come in not long after that. If you’ve been following along with us today on Twitter, or on this story, we’re now moving from election day coverage to election night coverage.

Dallas County offered 14 voting precincts and 243 cumulative voting locations. Before Super Tuesday, 1,085,065 Texan Republicans and 1,000,231 Democrats had taken advantage of early voting, our sister publication D Magazine reported.

Among the races we’re watching locally is the Republican race to see who faces off against incumbent Colin Allred for Texas Congressional District 32. Will it be a runoff between Genevieve Collins and Floyd McLendon, or will one of them win outright?

On the Senate race, state Sen. Royce West, M.J. Hegar, Chris Bell, Amanda Edwards, and Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez will vie to see who will face off against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, who also drew a challenger in Dallas businessman Mark Yancey.

We’re also watching the Democratic race to see who will try to unseat incumbent state Rep. Morgan Meyer. Will it be Joanna Cattanach, who was only 200 votes shy of beating him in 2018? Or will it be Shawn Terry or Tom Erwin?

While we wait, let us know – who do you think surges ahead in early voting? What races do you think will be runoff elections? Let us know, and stay tuned for early voting totals.

Early voting totals in Dallas County, Democratic Primary: Biden and Sanders are fairly even, with 27.05 percent going to Biden, and 25.5 percent going to Sanders.

In the Senate race (and again, this is Dallas County only right now), West has more than 48 percent of early voting. So far, Cattanach has almost 59 percent of the vote as well in the Democratic primary.

The biggest contest locally for the Republican primary is the TX-32 race:

• Collins 49.7 percent
• McLendon 39 percent

We will have some more totals in a few minutes, as we run through some other countywide races.

Statewide early voting totals, Democratic primary: 

• President – Biden, 31.58 percent, Sanders, 18.42 percent
• Senate: Hegar, 32.22 percent; Bell, 13.33 percent

Moving forward, we’re going to give statewide totals for the presidential and senate races only until it is time to call races.

Dallas County is still just reporting early voting totals, so some new statewide numbers:

Senate, Democratic Primary, 1 percent reporting:

• Royce West, 48 percent
• MJ Hegar, 19 percent

Senate, Republican Primary, 2 percent reporting:

• John Cornyn, 77 percent
• Dwayne Stovall, 11 percent

President, Democratic Primary, 6 percent reporting:

• Bernie Sanders, 29 percent
• Joe Biden, 23 percent
• Michael Bloomberg, 19 percent
• Elizabeth Warren, 13 percent

We’ll have more totals for local races as soon as we have returns from Dallas County. While we are waiting, Deputy Editor Rachel Snyder reports that she met a poll worker today that is also a relatively new U.S. citizen.

“Adeline Fournier, who became a U.S. citizen by way of France within the last two years, helped in new country by volunteering as a poll worker at Bradfield Elementary for the second time Tuesday,” Rachel reported. “Bradfield Elementary saw small lines, but a steady stream of voters throughout the day.”

Fournier’s neighbor, election judge Sandy McDonough, asked her to help at the polls and even attended the ceremony where Fournier became a U.S. citizen.

“I wanted to help,” Fournier said.

She said she feels a special connection to America and respect for its democratic process partly because her father is from Normandy.

Now, if only we could get some Dallas County returns …

We’re now moving returns to the table below. We’ll be updating it throughout the night, and it is our local races and pertinent statewide races only. Stay tuned for reaction and more analysis tomorrow, too.