lawmakers. it s in these very places that the members of congress are wondering if they should return themselves to the private sector. that suburban trend is about two things. it s about demographics but it s also about the affordability of the big cities, and i believe big city voters being pushed out to the suburbs taking their big city values and their big city votes with them. you just said something interesting, brianna, about sort of giving people something to vote for because texas does have for a variety of reasons the obstacles put in front of folks for being able to vote. it does have lower participation rates than a lot of other states. what s your sort of theory of the case about that? well, last year we reached out to 900,000 unique voters across the states, delivered 465,000 voters during the midterm, 115,000 of those voters had never voted in a midterm before. wow. i mean, those are big numbers. numbers. numbers. numbers.
to the suburbs taking their big city values and their big city votes with them. you just said something interesting, brianna, about sort of giving people something to vote for because texas does have for a variety of reasons the obstacles put in front of folks for being able to vote. it does have lower participation rates than a lot of other states. what s your sort of theory of the case about that? well, last year we reached out to 900,000 unique voters across the states, delivered 465,000 voters during the midterm, 115,000 of those voters had never voted in a midterm before. wow. i mean, those are big numbers. you know, texas is a big city. you can go to scale really quickly. and i think it fundamentally goes back to, you know, this idea of how do you expand the electorate, right? how do you give people something to vote for? when there have been everything from structural barriers that prevent people from fully participating in our democracy
and shape of the electorate. we know from the early voting numbers that enthusiasm is high, the very latest numbers as of the end of early voting on friday, early voting in this county tapped 465,000, that is far more than in past midterm elections and even more than the 2012 election. let s send it over to brian todd in virginia. reporter: thanks very much. we are about 90 minutes into one of the most exciting days of voting in northern virginia than we have seen in a long time. polls opened at 6:00 a.m. but people were trying to get in at 5:30 a.m. a steady stream of voters coming through this view, precinct 702 in the tenth voting district of virginia. one of those suburban battle grounds where the control of the house of representatives is going to play out. we will walk through the doors into the voting area. steady stream of people coming in here for the last 90 minutes. they register over here, this he vote at six voting stations over here. virginia has at least in the last ye
county. the big races we are watching like the race between ted cruz and beto o rourke. they will be watching closely what happens in this country because president trump beat hillary clinton here by nine points. that s the same margin by which he won the state of texas. we have to win here in order to be able to win the state. of course, it will come down to the shape and size of the electorate. early voting here tops 465,000. that is far more than past midterms and more than the early voting in 2012. we will be watching to see which party and candidate benefits the most from that extra enthusiase. we will send it over to ryan young in wisconsin. reporter: thanks. we have also seen that impact of the people with the early
country. and ted cruz is a strong supporter of president trump. issues that i m concerned with, abortion being one. illegal immigration. crime. and supreme court justices. i believe ted cruz is a constitutional conservative. i appreciate what he did with respect to justice kavanaugh confirmation proceedings. so i m fully supportive of senator ted cruz. thank you. mr. guerrero, one of the more than 465,000 voters in tarrant county who came out and voted early. that s more than 40% of the registered voters here. those numbers are much higher than past midterms. even higher than the early vote total in the 2012 election, according to the elections administrator here, and of course, the numbers in texas also off the charts. nearly more than 4.8 million people voted early. back to you guys. that s a question, do the early voters give an advantage to either party? not clear. huge numbers. athena jones, thanks.