Harris County, Texas—Texas’s most populous county, which Kamala Harris won in 2024 with 52 percent of the vote—broke its early voting record on Monday, eclipsing the previous mark by a whopping 41,000 votes.
More than 104,600 people in Harris County voted in-person on Monday, the first day of early voting in Texas, according to the county’s elections department. That breaks the previous record set in 2018, when 63,188 votes were cast and Democrats went on to recapture the House.
While Monday’s turnout isn’t necessarily indicative of a Democratic advantage, the broken record indicates that Texans have been strongly compelled to participate electorally by any number of factors, which could include affordability, ICE raids, or President Trump’s war on Iran.
“The coffee that I buy two years ago was $12 for a big can and now it’s $25 for the same thing, it’s ridiculous,” one voter told KPRC-TV’s Sandy Torres.
“[The] cost of living is way too high, war in Iran, our support to Ukraine,” said another.
“Thirty years of one party dominating the state, it’s time to get the other guy’s chance,” said one more.
This comes ahead of one of the most contested Senate races in the country between Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico—a contest that could turn the state blue for the first time in over three decades.
This positive development also comes less than a week after voting rights groups sued the Texas Department of Public Safety over a “glitch” that caused 600,000 Texans to have their voting registration delayed.
Early voting is open for 11 more days in Harris County.