First-time voters flock to polls

First-time voters are flocking to the polls this Election Day.

Numbers show Texas has exceeded 15.1 million registered voters for the first time, with nearly a million new registrants just since the March primary. Texas has also broken records for early voting turnout, with almost 4.5 million Texas residents casting early ballots in the state’s 15 largest counties alone.

While demographic data isn’t collected in Texas, there’s evidence nationally that Trump’s inflammatory comments about Latinos could increase Hispanic registration and voting. An analysis by former Texas Republican Party pollster Dereck Ryan shows that 23 percent of Texas’ new registrants since March have Hispanic surnames.

Paulina Longenbaugh, who is a first-time voter, cast her ballot at Mesita Elementary early Tuesday morning. Longenbaugh tells Abc-7 it was an emotional experience.

“It’s an important election for me, as an immigrant, as a woman. I have a lot of family members who are unable to vote, who have been productive citizens. I moved here, I’m an immigrant to two parents who worked really hard to give me the opportunity of living here in the U.S. They sent me to an Ivy League school, failure for me was not an option and that’s the same way I saw voting. Not voting was not an option,” Longenbaugh said.

Longenbaugh has lived in the U.S for 23 years and became a U.S citizen two years ago. She says the road to becoming a citizen was hard because the process to do so is “so convoluted and inefficient.” She says unlike many young voters, she made it a point to vote because there’s so much at stake.

“It wasn’t an emotional one, it was a logical one and that’s unfortunately not the stance a lot of people take, but the one thing that has disappointed me the most in the election, regardless of the candidates, is probably my generation. The kids that I went to school and my friends, they’re all voting, but they’re all a product of where I came from, the school that I went to, but a lot of my peers here locally are indifferent and that kind of breaks my heart because I had to work so hard to gain the right to vote and they were just born with it. They were lucky enough to just be born with it and they don’t utilize it . To me that’s the most disappointing thing and heartbreaking thing,” Longenbaugh said.

Longenbaugh tells Abc-7 she thinks the views and messages from both parties are so different in social and political views, making the decision very clear for voters. She says she considers herself a very moderate voter with conservative economic views but liberal social views. During her first year, she decided to vote for Hillary Clinton.

“I just hope people get passionate about what our country is having to go through and kind of try and empathize with somebody’s situation you may not have been in. It’s easy for me to understand the immigrant position, because that was my experience and as a woman as well and a minority woman at that.”

Polls close at 7 P.M. Stay with Abc-7 for election results and coverage.