Latino early voting is running ahead of the 2024 pace as Texas polls open Monday

Early voting opens across Texas on Monday and Latino voters are arriving with momentum. Fresh turnout data and a new national survey point to a group that is more engaged than it was four years ago and in some places is already voting at a faster clip than it did in a presidential year.

More Latino votes already cast than at this point in 2024

A Democratic data firm that tracks early ballots looked at 229 counties that were reporting votes as of Oct. 8. In those counties nearly 112,000 Latinos had already voted. At the same point in the 2024 presidential race the figure was about 106,000. Latinos made up nearly 8 percent of early voters in those counties, a bigger share than at this stage of either 2022 or 2024.

"It's incredibly unusual to see any group outperform presidential turnout at this point in the cycle," said Tom Bonier, a senior adviser at the firm. He noted that Latino turnout normally falls more than other groups in midterm years. The counties with the biggest jumps were often ones that have seen high-profile immigration enforcement.

There is a catch. Early voting has only just begun in most places and the big Latino states have barely started to report. Texas, California, New York and Pennsylvania will tell a fuller story. Nick Ahamed of the research group Equis also warned against reading too much into early numbers because nobody knows yet how those ballots will split.

A survey shows rising motivation

A national survey of 774 Latino registered voters taken from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4 found Democratic House candidates ahead 51 percent to 24 percent. Among Latino voters who back a Democrat 53 percent say they are extremely motivated to vote. That is up from 41 percent in 2022. Some 77 percent of those voters say it really matters who controls Congress compared with 58 percent four years ago.

The economy is the top issue and concern about gas prices and unemployment is growing. Only 24 percent of Latino voters approve of the job the president is doing. Seven in 10 say the administration's policies have hurt Hispanics. Latino voters are now about as engaged as other voters. In 2022 they were less engaged.

Texas and a race against the clock

Early voting in Texas runs from Monday through Oct. 30. Voter registration closed on Oct. 5 so only people already on the rolls can take part. Mail ballot applications must reach county clerks by Oct. 23. Florida and Michigan open early voting on Oct. 24 and Miami-Dade County starts Monday. About 39 million Latinos are eligible to vote nationwide and make up roughly 16 percent of the electorate.

Outreach is still a gap. A recent poll by UnidosUS found 53 percent of Hispanic voters in Texas had heard nothing about the midterms from any party or campaign or civic group. UnidosUS and the LULAC Institute have teamed up with two other national Latino groups on a joint effort aimed at reaching more than 5 million Latino voters.

Equis counts 20 competitive House districts where Latinos make up over a tenth of eligible voters. In a dozen of them they are over a fifth. If the early surge holds the Latino vote could decide some of the tightest races on the map.