Early voting wait times have gone down across Austin

Welcome back. You're watching Fox 7 Austin News at 5 30. Wait times today at most early voting locations across the Austin metro have dramatically gone down, but it's unclear if the surge is over or if it's just a midweek lull before a Friday dash. Fox 7 Austin's chief political reporter Rudy Koski joining us now with an update on the vote and the push that continues in a notable local congressional race. Rudy. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how all this is going to play out on the campaign trail and in the ballot box. Now, if this big surge really is over, especially from Democrats, the question is, will we start seeing a gradual increase of Republicans starting to vote? And this political ebb and flow has historically happened in past elections. The possibility of a turnout downturn brought efforts Wednesday to jumpstart voter turnout. Now, it's a push not only focused on each party base, but now one that includes independents who have also not yet voted. In our Battleground Texas show today, we took a look at the final drive to the election day. We dove into the campaign for Congressional District 37, which covers much of East Austin. Incumbent Democrat Greg Casar voted today and urged those who have not yet voted not to be scared off by the last-minute ad blitz that's coming. We also spoke to his Republican challenger, Lauren Pena, about her grassroots neighborhood strategy for the next few days. In the last days before an election, that's when you start to see posts built to try to make you feel angry or feel scared. But that's exactly when it makes most sense to take a beat and take a breath. Thousands of likes is not proof that something is true, and neither is a confident influencer. The early voting numbers in Travis County and Bexar County indicate a big surge by Democrats. Do you buy that? And you're gonna see Republicans start to pick up. But I wanna tell you, here in our district, there is a significant population of people that identify as independents. And I think that that's really where we're gonna see these votes start to come in. So we're seeing that blitz as a matter of, okay, now how many people have already voted? like what, 5 million in Texas? So who is it reaching and who's left to be going out to vote and be influenced? As I've said before, the Texas suburbs are far more purple than they were 10 years ago. And I think this midterm may well provide proof of that very contention. Now, as Stephen Dahl mentioned just a moment ago, 5.5 million people have early voted so far in the state of Texas, according to the Secretary of State's office. That's 29% of the 19 million people who are registered to vote in texas so here we go guys early voting ends on friday there is no voting no trick-or-treating politically on saturday just halloween candy on saturday no voting on Sunday, no voting on Monday, uh the last day to vote election day that's Tuesday, Alec Rudy is that early voting still at a record pace so far well kind of how you want to look at it the count is still running a little higher than the total in-person and mail-in voting for the '22 midterm election vote, early vote, but it's still well under the 9.7 million who early voted in the 2020 presidential year and the 9.1 who voted in '24. Remember, we're just at 5.5. Rudy Kowski, thank you.