El Paso County is on track to record its highest-ever early voting turnout for a midterm election, results of the first week of balloting indicate.
The surge in early voting is driven in part by people who haven’t been frequent voters in previous El Paso elections, according to an El Paso Matters analysis of county voting data. The hotly contested U.S. Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico is the most prominent race on the ballot, but dozens of other statewide and local contests await El Paso voters.
Almost a third of people who cast early votes so far this year didn’t vote in El Paso in the last midterm in 2022. One in eight didn’t vote in El Paso in the 2024 presidential election.
Through seven days of early voting that ended Sunday, more than 95,000 El Paso County residents had cast ballots, or 18% of registered voters. That’s 78% more than the turnout at the same point of the last midterm election in 2022…