SAN ANTONIO — Tuesday brought beautiful summer-like weather to San Antonio—beautiful enough to wait outside in lines at polling places for the 2024 primaries.
Yet it was barely enough for elections officials to reach 80% of their day-of turnout goal.
Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen told KENS 5 during Super Tuesday voting that she was hoping for 100,000 day-of voters by the time polls closed at 7p.m. The final number: 78,244.
Coupled with 93,456 ballots submitted during the early-vote window and 12,952 completed absentee ballots, a total of 184,652 Bexar County residents voted in this year's primaries. That amounts to a 14.81% turnout in a county with 1.2 million registered voters.
In the last 10 years, only 2014 and 2018 primaries saw a lower voter turnout, and the 184,652 ballots are the lowest for any primary in Bexar County since 2018.
Unlike those years, however, 2024 is a presidential election year. One reason voters might have stayed home anyway: Joe Biden and Donald Trump dominating the competition in other states so far this year.
"There has been chatter among voters that they almost didn't know there was an election," Callanen said around noon on Tuesday. "This has been a quiet season. They were not getting a ton of campaign literature. Some say, 'Why didn't you send a card to tell me it was an election day?' But we don't do that."
Still, Callanen said her office was hoping for a primaries turnout of between 11% and 15% They reached that goal, though Bexar County saw a 22.5% voter turnout in the last presidential primary in 2020.
"This is good for a primary, but it is a little disappointing," Callanen indicated Tuesday afternoon, with hours left to go until polls closed.
Early vote numbers signaled stronger participation by local Republicans this year; they submitted 54,124 during the early-vote window compared to 39,302 Democrats who made it to the polls ahead of time. The trend continued on Super Tuesday, with more than 47,700 Republicans making it to the polls compared to about 30,500 Democrats.
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