Richardson was third only to Duncanville and Garland in early voting according to Dallas County election officials. The Duncanville Library recorded 33,464 votes; the Garland City Hall recorded 29,613 while the Richardson Civic Center recorded 27,957 votes. The Richardson Echo examined voter data and found that just over 7,000 of the Civic Center votes were for people living in Dallas County in places other than Richardson.

One of the big stories in the national media is how Democratic voter registration is ahead of Republican registration and turnout. Richardson has, for several decades, been predominantly Republican. In the 2006 general election, Dallas County Democrats swept out Republicans from countywide offices. The Echo examined early voting and historical data to see if this trend is sweeping North into Richardson. We have not examined data from other parts of the county or for the Richardson part of Collin county.

We examined past early voting data from the 2004 and 2006 elections. (See table below.) We looked at the results of the George Bush vs. John Kerry Presidential match up in 2004 and straight party ticket voting in 2004 and 2006.

From this data we determined that Richardson precincts 1701, 1702, and 1703 voted most heavily in the Republican column. Precincts 1708, 1709, and 1721 voted most heavily for Democrats in our data. It should be noted that even though the latter are the three most Democratic precincts, they still lean Republican in total whereas the first three are overwhelmingly Republican. (Note: We ignored precinct 1726 because the low numbers of voters skews any results.)

In the three most Republican precincts, they ranked 14th, 15th, and 20th (out of 20 precincts) in increases for early voting participation. Of the three most Democratic precincts, they ranked 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in increases for early voting participation.

Precincts 1702 and 1721 were especially notable. 1702, which is clearly the top Republican precinct, saw only a 7.1 percent increase in early voting and by far experienced the lowest increase in early voting participation. Precinct 1721, a top Democratic precinct, saw a whopping 70.4 percent increase. The average for all of Richardson was a 22.2% increase compared to 2004.

National pundits talk about increases in voting in Democratic areas -- because of Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s campaign – affecting “down ballot” races. In Richardson, those down ballot races would be for State Representative in district 112, State Senate district 16, and US Representative district 32.

Editorial Analysis: Pete Sessions and John Carona are Republican incumbents for US Representative district 32 and State Senate district 16 respectively. They stand a very high chance of retaining their positions unless there are trends outside of Richardson (which is certainly possible) which dominate.  Since the data we looked at is limited to Richardson, there is nothing here which says they are in trouble.

The race for State Representative in district 112 is another matter. Neither candidate (Republican Angie Chen Button or Democrat Sandra VuLe) is an incumbent. Both are Asian women born outside the United States. Therefore ethnic, gender, and incumbent advantages that one might imagine are negated. Two of the top early voting locations were Garland and Richardson which both comprise district 112. National pundits say that voter increases are favoring Democrats. If that is true, then does this mean that VuLe gets some help against Button’s well financed and connected campaign? That question will be answered on Tuesday night.

Early Voting trends in Richardson 2004 vs 2008 General Election