Likely the most important question on everyone’s minds is how many voters will turn out on November 5. Candidates running for office and the consultants helping them are asking this question. Some voters may be asking the same question, who are the likely voters and how many of them will turn out to vote. Here is what twenty-plus years of data tells us.
In El Paso, it will be the Democrats that will prevail in the ballots in November. But the non-partisan city council and mayoral elections has the consultants and candidates trying to figure out who and how many voters will be voting. For most of the analysts, identifying the gold standard voter is the first important step. The gold standard voter is the voter that has voted in the last three presidential ballots. The last three presidential ballots were in 2022, 2020 and 2018. If 44.4% of El Paso’s registered voters turn out to the ballots in November then there will be around 229,845 voters casting ballots. That is what the data suggests.
But unfortunately, it is not as simple as that because the voter turnout has been on a downturn since 2018 when 205,822 voters turned out, or 45.03% of the registered voters. In 2020, 269,007 ballots were cast but in 2022, only 166,898 voters turned out to vote. Will the trend remain the same where about 33% of the electorate will vote or will it be the last three presidential average of 44.4% of the electorate who will be the ones that vote?
There is one thing that suggests that the voter turnout in November will be one of the highest turnouts for El Paso. It is Kamala Harris.
There is no doubt that Harris being on the presidential ticket has brought attention to the November ballot in El Paso. How many El Paso voters will she drive to the ballots remains speculative but the fact that she is on the ballot cannot be discarded.
This brings up the question, who are the triple-A voters or the gold standard voters that consultants and candidates are seeking?
Analyzing the voters who cast ballots in the last three presidential elections we find that there are 31,937 voters who can be described as the gold standard voter. Of those, around 10,000 have an almost perfect presidential election turnout. It is the almost 32,000 gold standard voters that will be getting the political mailers in their mailboxes and the text messages on their phones from various campaigns.
Breaking down the gold standard voters even more we find that there are around 4,900 gold standard voters in District 1. In District 2 we identified around 3,300 and in District 3 we found around 4,700 while in District 4 there are about 3,330. In District 5 we found about 1,400 and in District 7 there are almost 4,200 prime voters.
Some may question why identifying the gold standard voter by using the last three presidential elections is what the consultants use. Why not the last four presidential elections, or why not compile a list of voters that voted in the municipal elections, after all that is the election that matters in November for El Paso voters.
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The answer lies in that up until 2017 municipal elections were held in May where an average of voter turn out was 3,000 to 10,000 voters depending on the office. With over 200,000 voters expected to cast ballots in November, 3,500 or so voters will not move the needle in most offices. Additionally, the pandemic and Harris versus Trump have upset several voting models leaving consultants trying to update their strategies to model their voter turnouts.
But the approximately 32,000 gold standard voters only represent 13-16% of the voters expected to vote in November. What about the other 160,000+ voters? Who will they be?
For that strategists apply other models like who voted in the three last primaries combined with the two last presidential ballots, or who voted in the last six primaries and presidential elections. Each strategist will apply different algorithms to arrive at who the likely voter will be in November.
Our own modeling suggests that your typical voter in November will be an infrequent voter who is motivated to vote for several reasons unique to this election like in 2020 when 55.13% of the electorate came out to vote, or the 2016 election where 51.16% of the electorate voted.
In 2022, only 32.9% of the electorate voted.
If voters are motivated to vote like they did in 2016 and 2020 then the common thread for this election will be Donald Trump. A useful analysis of who voted in 2016 and 2020 provides us with a list of voters that will likely be at the ballots in November. It is these voters that many candidates are hoping to convince to vote for them.
But there is a subset of El Paso voters that are prime voters. We can count on these voters to cast a ballot in November.
The 8,000 Prime Voters
There are a little under 8,000 El Paso voters that we know are likely to vote because our analysis of presidential ballots cast with lifetime ballots gives them a perfect score. Contrary to convention, there are 33 voters who are under 30 years old. But the majority are sixty and older.
The gender breakdown of the prime voter is 47% men and the rest are women.
Our analysis found that there are 1,017 prime voters in District 1. District 2 has 930 prime voters, while District 3 has 1,368 of them. In District 4 there are 650 prime voters and in District 5 there are 204 voters who are part of the prime voter slate. Rounding out our list of prime voters are the 1,207 in District 7.
Want To Be Part Of The Prime Voters
El Paso News will be reaching out to a sample of the prime voters to ask if they are willing to be part of our polling for the November elections. We will be sending text messages to them asking to confirm if they want to share their voting thoughts with us. Based on the sample size that agree to let us know their thoughts about voting we will bring you reports of how the election is going for the city council seats and the mayor’s office.
Want to be part of our polling? Send us an email (news[@]elpasonews.org) with your telephone number. We will reply asking you for details like your name and your zip code to identify you are a registered voter. Once we’ve identified you, you will be one of the individuals we will rely on to bring election news to our readers. Please, only El Paso County registered voters will be accepted.
As always, we are making our data set available to our readers. With our El Paso Votes App you can lookup who the prime and gold standard voters are. However, due to past abuse, we are now requiring you to register for a free account and you must log in to view our voter data.