A Great Awakening? III

Another case of anomalously heavy voting. This time in Texas. Courtesy of Burnt Orange Report via DailyKos

Texas shattering early voting records

Click on the link to get the full effect, but those early numbers in Texas are off the charts. In the top 15 counties with registered Democratic voters, there have been 419,904 early votes cast. Four years ago, the number was 72,688. What is that, six times the previous numbers? In voter-rich Harris County, home of Houston, it's a 10-fold increase.

And it's not just an excited base.

Dallas County broke the '06 total vote yesterday, with over 57,000 early votes (not counting the mail ballots). We've looked at about 55,000 of those, and as best we can tell, virtually half have no '02, '04 or '06 primary history. Less than 3,000 have previous R primary history over the same period.

Half of them are new voters?

Harris County -- the third largest county in the United States-- is on pace to shatter the total vote from 2004 just with early voters. Harris County is working to turn blue in November, much like Dallas did in '06 and Travis did in '04, and this record turnout is sure to help that.

Travis is Austin, now a Democratic stronghold with few peers. Dallas notched dramatic Democratic gains in 2006. If Harris County follows suit, we're looking at another big step closer to turning Texas into a bona fide swing state. Not in 2008, mind you, but perhaps by 2012.

This is long-term thinking and building in action, the hallmark of a real 50-state strategy.

See earlier Great Awakening posts here and here.