Record early voting totals leave big question: Does rush favor Democrats or GOP?
https://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/Five-things-to-know-about-the-Texas-early-voting-13345501.php October 30, 2018
An unprecedented number of Texans cast their ballots during the first week of early voting, but it is impossible to predict whether that surge will benefit Republicans or Democrats because more than 25 percent of the voters have no primary election voting history, an analysis of data from the Secretary of State shows.
People whose voting records provide no clue of their party affiliation cast 27.8 percent of the ballots in the 15 most populous counties in Texas, according to the analysis by Republican consultant Derek Ryan.
About one-third of the early voters in those counties had voted in a Republican primary in the past; for Democrats, it was 30 percent. Those percentages are consistent with early voting totals from the last midterm primary, in 2014, Ryan said.