Travis Country turnout number up, but NOWHERE near enough (to change anything)

"Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
Matthew 7:20

Fascinating early vote information:

1/ NEW: #EarlyVoting turnout in the 2018 midterms surpassed turnout from the 2012 presidential election in the 30 counties where most registered voters in Texas live.

That means more than 4,884,528 Texans voted early.

That's a lot.#Midterms2018 https://t.co/KHsTBiCL40 pic.twitter.com/cSRKPUadyX

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) November 3, 2018

Turnout is, obviously, up.

What does that mean?!?

Probably nothing.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton grossed over 300,000 votes in Travis County and netted over 170K:

She still lost the state by approximately 800k votes:

In other words, a gross of 300k and a net of 170k in Travis County still leads to an 800k loss statewide.

And that's in one of the Democrats' best years in recent memory.

What does this mean?!?

Democrats need to net at least 250k votes out of Travis County to have any hope of competing statewide.  In order to net 250k, they probably have to gross 550k.  And they're not doing the work it would take to produce turnout in those numbers.

And that's before you get to the fact that the GOP's 2018 ticket in Texas is stronger than the 2016 ticket.

Case in point: This author most certainly did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016...but we most certainly did vote for Ted Cruz in 2018.

And there are almost certainly enough conservatives who feel the same way as this author to pump Cruz's numbers 2 or 3 points higher than Trump.

Bottom Line: Until the Democrats start pulling 500k+ in Travis County, nothing much will change statewide.