In Texas, early voting ended on Friday, and all records were broken. In the
top 15 counties in Texas, 29.66 percent of the registered voters (2,412,952 people) have already voted. The lines were packed. At the city's Multiservices Center, there were about 100 people an hour voting. At the Fiesta on Kirby, the lines were up and down the aisles. (One of my family members was elated that he found dehydrated garlic in one of the aisles while he was waiting to vote. He'd been looking for some for quite some time.)
Anyhow, Texas was always going to go to Bush, but there is now
speculation that the margin isn't going to be nearly as big as last time. Bush is actually going to campaign here tonight.
I think that in Texas, Democratic anger may be as strong as in places like Florida, because of the redistricting fight last year as well as general Democratic anger. I've never seen Democrats so mobilized, and
the polls suggest that there's a resurgence in the party in Texas. Part of it is due to population changes (earlier this year, the census bureau found that there is no longer an ethnic majority in Texas), and I think a lot of it is due to generally being pissed off. The convention in June was PACKED and there was a lot of really positive energy flowing out of it. More importantly a lot of the people at the convention were first time delegates.
The Washington Times had an article last week
that was fairly pessimistic about Republican chances in the House races here. Remember, the redistricting mess was brought about so the Republicans could gain seats in the House. They were supposed to get five guarnateed seats out of the Tom DeLay maps, and now it's looking like they'll probably only get two or three. (We'll probably lose Charlie Stenholm, which is a blow not only to his district, but to all of Texas because he was a ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, and he brought a lot of good things (read: pork) to Texas. The Sessions/Frost race is too close to call, and the President will be campaigning for Sessions tonight. That was supposed to be a fairly easy win for Sessions. Chet Edwards, Max Sandlin, and Nick Lampson are all within range of winning, and high voter turnout is good for all of them.)
No one has really been paying attention to us because it's not been a state in play for the Presidency, I think that there's a shift in attitude here in Texas, and it's going to be very interesting to see how it all pans out.
