Now that early voting has ended, Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said Saturday that the county’s voting is down from the 2020 presidential election.
Callanen is still predicting a busy Election Day turnout on Nov. 5, however, in part because there have been fewer opportunities this year to vote ahead of time.
Because of COVID-19 precautions during the 2020 election, early voting was extended by a week, and a tremendous emphasis was put on voting by mail.
Against that backdrop, Callanen said that in 2020 the county received about 690,000 votes cast early or by mail — compared to 605,000 early and mailed votes cast in 2024, though mailed ballots are still being counted as they’re received.
That puts the county’s turnout at about 46.7% headed into Election Day this year, Callanen said on Saturday.
Total turnout for county in the 2020 election was 65.1%.
Callanen said it’s unlikely Bexar County will catch up to that percentage in 2024.
But Election Day voting should account for a much larger share of the total votes cast this year, she said, bringing the raw vote total at least as high as 2020.
The unusual focus on early and mail-in voting made for a much lower than expected Election Day turnout in 2020, with roughly 84,000 votes cast, Callanen said.
“The key to this that we’re looking at is Election Day in 2020… which was like, ‘Where’s the voters?'” Callanen said. “So we’re taking a step back here, and we’re waiting.”
This Tuesday, Callanen said the Elections Department is planning for roughly 275,000 Election Day votes to be cast across Bexar County’s 300-plus voting locations — more than triple the number of Election Day votes cast four years ago.
She pointed to the 2022 midterm, when Gov. Greg Abbott was on the ballot against Democrat Beto O’Rourke, as an example of how voting patterns have shifted since the “anomaly” of 2020.
Roughly 151,000 votes were cast on Election Day during the 2022 midterm, Callanen said — almost double the Election Day turnout of the 2020 presidential race — even though overall turnout in the midterm was far lower.
Not only had early voting returned to a regular two week window, but Texas’ 2021 voting law made voting by mail more complicated, Callanen said.
Compared to the 121,000 mail ballot applications her office received in 2020, this year they’ve received just 51,000.
“We’d never seen that [number of mail ballot applications], and we haven’t seen it since,” Callanen said of the 2020 bump.
