Texas early voters: D+3 on the state’s own records, R+1 in the tracker

Texas has no party registration, so trackers estimate the party of its early voters. Using the state’s own records instead, we matched 2,159,376 Texans who voted early through Oct 21, 2026, to the 2026 primary and runoff rosters. 34.7% last took a Democratic primary ballot, 31.3% a Republican one, and 34.0% voted in neither: a Democratic edge of 3.4 points. On Oct 23, two days later, the NBC News / TargetSmart tracker put Texas early voters at D 45, R 46, Other 9: R+1. On Oct 22 the same tracker had read D 49, R 42, Other 9, or D+7.

What it means

On the state’s records through Oct 21, the Texas early vote leans Democratic. In raw counts, 749,324 early voters last took a Democratic ballot and 676,293 a Republican one. The tracker has swung from D+7 to R+1 in a day, so the two sources now disagree on the sign, although they cover different dates.

Much of the gap is about who counts as Other. A third of Texas early voters did not vote in a 2026 primary. TargetSmart’s model assigns most of them to a party, leaving 9% Other. On a two-party basis, primary history gives Democrats 52.6%; the tracker gave 53.8% on Oct 22 and 49.5% on Oct 23.

The Democratic share is falling by the day, which is consistent with the tracker’s move. On Oct 19, the first day of in-person early voting, voters with a Democratic primary history outnumbered Republicans 307,000 to 243,000. On Oct 21, Republicans led 187,000 to 181,000, and voters with no 2026 primary were the largest group.

What it doesn’t mean

Primary history is not vote choice. In March 2026 more Texans voted in the Democratic primary (2.30 million) than the Republican one (2.15 million), which is unusual for the state. So “last primary Democratic” is partly a measure of who turned out in March, and overstates the Democratic lean of the electorate.

It does not settle the Other third. Voters with no 2026 primary could lean either way. Vendor models disagree on them: on Oct 22, L2’s public dashboard had Texas at D+6, VoteHub’s primary-history measure at D+4, and On Point’s county-based model at R+6. The sources do not agree on the sign.

It is not complete. The state rosters we joined cover 95.1% of early ballots reported by the Secretary of State, including 97.1% of in-person votes but only 56% of mail ballots. The Oct 22 roster was partial when we pulled it.

How we checked

We downloaded the Texas Secretary of State’s daily Early Voting Roster for the Nov 3, 2026 general, Oct 14 to Oct 22, and removed duplicates by voter ID. We joined it to the statewide rosters for the March 3, 2026 primaries and May 26 runoffs. The most recent 2026 primary ballot wins: the runoff first, then March. 124 voters on both parties’ rosters were counted as Other.

To test whether a one-year window distorts the result, we used 2022 and 2024 primary rosters that four counties post publicly: Tarrant and Hidalgo for both years, Dallas and Bexar for 2024. Those counties hold 25.2% of Texas early voters. Adding the older primaries cut Other by 4 to 7 points per county but moved the margin only about 0.6 points toward Republicans: Tarrant −1.8, Hidalgo +2.8, Dallas −0.2, Bexar −1.1.

The state-records figures were not refreshed on Oct 23, because the rosters need a browser download. Names and precincts were dropped as the files were read. Only voter IDs and aggregate counts were kept.