ABC-7 Analysis: El Paso voter registration jumps, driven by young adults and Eastsiders

A record 457,141 El Paso County residents are registered to vote for the Nov. 6 election, according to data from the County Elections Department. That’s up from 427,850 in the 2016 presidential election and 404,580 in 2014, the last midterm election.

El Paso’s voter registration grew by 6.8 percent since 2016, faster than the state’s 4.6 percent growth rate. Preliminary figures from the Secretary of State’s Office show that only 18 of Texas’ 254 counties have had a higher percentage growth of registered voters than El Paso between 2016 and 2018. The Secretary of State’s Office is still processing voter registrations, so registration numbers for most counties will grow over the next few days. The tentative trends, however, seem unlikely to change much.

The counties with the highest growth rates are largely in the fast-growing suburban areas around Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The other three large border counties – Hidalgo, Webb and Cameron – also have higher registration growth than the state average. More than 90 rural counties had declining registration numbers, according to Secretary of State data.

An analysis of El Paso County Elections Department records shows that more than one in five of all registered voters – 96,100 – signed up since the last presidential election in 2016. Almost 19,000 people registered in the last month before the Oct. 9 deadline to be eligible to vote in the Nov. 6 election.

Those figures suggest a potential surge of voter energy in El Paso. Between the 2014 and 2016 elections, a total of just under 70,000 new registrants signed up in El Paso, including 14,000 in the last month of registration, well below the totals in the past two years. That’s notable because voter registration activity is usually much lower in midterm elections than in presidential years.

Large numbers of volunteers – many affiliated with the campaign of Democratic Senate nominee Beto O’Rourke of El Paso – have been aggressively registering El Paso voters in recent months.

The median age for an El Paso registered voter – meaning half are younger and half are older – is 44. That’s two years younger than the median age of a registered voter in 2016.

It’s important to remember that these are registered voters. The people who actually vote will probably be older than the typical registered voter, because younger registered voters are less likely to go to the polls. For example, the median age of an El Pasoan who cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election was 50; the median age for a voter in the 2014 midterm election was 59.

Just over 52 percent of registered voters are women. That’s the same as for registered voters in 2016, and similar to the makeup of people who actually went to the polls in 2016. But in recent midterm elections in El Paso, more men than women have voted.

And what about those 96,100 people who have registered since the 2016 election? Well, the median age is 33, much younger than the general registered voter population. About a third of the new registered voters are under age 25. Like the overall registered voter population, 52 percent of newly registered voters are women.

The ZIP Code with the largest population of new voters is 79936, in the growing East Side area in the El Paso city limits, with more than 12,000 people registering since the 2016 election. The second big pocket is 79912 on the city’s West Side, with almost 11,000 newly added voters.

Two large zip codes on the eastern fringe of the city limits and into unincorporated areas of the county also saw significant numbers of new registrants. In 79938, more than 10,000 registrants are new to the rolls since 2016; in 79928 it’s more than 8,000. More than a quarter of the registered voters in those two ZIP Codes are new since the presidential election.

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The largest concentration of newly registered voters is at Precinct 158 at Horizon Heights Elementary School in Horizon City, in the 79928 ZIP Code, which has more than 3,400 new registered voters. More than 860 of those new voters are under 25.

Almost 67,000 people were removed from the El Paso County voter rolls since the 2016 election. Those would be people who died, moved out of the county or met other criteria set by the state for being purged from voter rolls. Anyone who thinks they have been left off voter rolls improperly can do a provisional ballot that would be counted if it’s determined they were eligible to vote.