77% of Election Day voters in the Harris County Democratic primary had little or no Democratic primary history. The people who showed up last Tuesday were mostly people who had never done this before, and they showed up in massive numbers. 216,000 of them across the full cycle. That is a list of voters waiting to be organized, and right now most campaigns have no idea what to do with it.
Note: I define “surge voters” as people who voted in one of the last three Democratic primaries, or none at all.
What Actually Happened
Three weeks ago I wrote about the early vote surge in Harris County. If you’d like you can check out that piece here. At the end of early voting, surge voters made up 54.2% of the electorate. I thought that was the story.
Then Election Day blew the doors off.
136,905 people showed up on Election Day alone, and 77.2% of them were surge voters. The primary did not run out of steam as early voting closed. When you add it all up, 366,703 people cast a Democratic primary ballot in Harris County and 216,135 fit the surge definition.
Who are surge voters? They are younger, 18-34 year olds made up 36% of Election Day surge voters while voters 65 and older made up just 12.5%. They are more Latino, overrepresented in the surge by more than 6 points compared to the overall primary electorate.
New to Primaries. Not New to Voting.
The piece of this that most coverage got wrong is the idea that surge voters are brand new to elections. The vast majority of them are not. About 76 to 82% voted in two or more of the last three general elections. They had been showing up every November for years. There was just never enough on the Democratic primary ballot to pull them in until this cycle gave them a real competitive race at the top of the ticket.
This surge was a response, not a fluke. Give voters something worth showing up for and they show up. And here is what makes the November picture genuinely exciting: both Crockett and Talarico will be on the general election ballot. The energy that drove this primary is not gone. It is sitting there right now waiting to be organized.
What Your Campaign Should Do Right Now
Most campaigns are going to start thinking about these voters in August. That is a mistake. The primary ended days ago and these voters are still fired up. They are paying attention right now in a way they will not be in five months. Here is what smart campaigns are doing today.
Reach out and recruit volunteers. The person who voted in a Democratic primary for the first time this cycle did it because something got them excited. That excitement is an organizing asset. Reach out before it fades. The volunteer base you build in March is the one that wins you November.
Build your contact list around surge voters. Pull them from the primary file and treat them as their own group. They came in through a different door than your longtime base and they respond to different things. Every door knock, every call, and every piece of mail you send between now and November should account for that.
Find the voters who look like them but did not show up. The surge electorate is a profile, not just a list. There are voters in your district right now who are younger, less frequent primary voters, and more Latino, who did not cast a ballot this cycle. Those are your November expansion targets. Think of it as finding the people who were one good reason away from showing up and making sure your campaign is that reason.
Build your coalition around this group for the long term. This primary handed every campaign in Texas a map. The precincts where surge voters turned out are showing you where the energy lives in your district. That is not just a list of people to contact. That is the foundation of a coalition you can build a race around.
The Bottom Line
366,703 people voted in this primary and 60% of them were new to this process. They are still out there right now, fired up and paying attention, waiting to hear from someone.
The campaigns that move now — that turn surge voters into volunteers, donors, and neighbors who talk to other neighbors — are the campaigns that win in November.
The window is open. Go find them.
All of the underlying data — surge demographics, general election history, daily pace comparisons — is at hcprimarydashboard.com.
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