What we see so far in the 11 large counties with comparable data to 2016 is that registered voters are up 13% (by comparison, population is up 7.3% in Texas since 2016). In-person turnout is up 15% as a raw number, but only 1.57% as a share of registered voters (12.06% to 11.87%).
Voting by mail is where we see the big difference. Here we see a 26% raw increase and an 11.08% increase in relative turnout as a share of registered voters (2.55% vs. 2.30%).
Overall early voting (in-person and by mail) is 14.61% of registered voters in 2020 vs. 14.17% in 2016, a 3.11% increase in relative turnout of registered voters. Overall, this translates into 187,575 more early votes by mail and in-person on day 3 for these 11 large counties.
Bottom line, it’s not an unexpected result and turnout isn’t surging compared to 2016.
(NOTE: Travis, Denton, El Paso, and Galveston’s in-person numbers aren’t posted to the SOS for yesterday, so these counties were omitted in the comparison with day 3 in 2016.)
For more on early voting in Texas, see:
Don’t Pay Attention To Media Spin Of Massive Early Voting In Texas