Final push ahead of early voting

Well, the midterm campaign is almost over. Early voting starts Monday with several candidates this weekend launching one last big push for voters. Fox 7 Austin's chief political reporter Rudy Kosky joining us from the newsroom with a look at the early vote strategy. Rudy. Hi, Alec. Yeah, it certainly is crunch time with a lot of political calculus being done along with some voter precinct forecasting now targeting is part of this midterm game plan but i'm not talking about the illegal hit that can be draw a flag on the gridiron on our battleground texas show we talked about the early vote strategy with political analyst brian smith and we also discussed how the political football game being played for the next two weeks will essentially be a two-minute drill to the end zone, bus tours and campaign ad blitzes. They wanna lock in votes early, meaning getting people who are gonna vote Democrat or Republican, getting them out to vote sooner. That way they can focus their attention on areas of the state that might not vote as much and also on those undecideds. Looking in your crystal ball, early vote drops on election night, the major metros underperform. What does that tell you? Okay, the major metros underperformed, that's good news for the Republicans. The base is what matters to both parties. That's what likely will be the real non-surprise on election day. It looks like we will only get two weeks of targeted messaging, no debating. Do your sources say this is a misplay by the GOP or a good dodge? Look, it's a big gamble. They're running this election like the last one. And the rules, well, they may have changed, Rudy. And we're going to find out on November 3rd. Yeah, we certainly will. But something else that we found out today, we also learned that there was another voter registration glitch. It involved about 15,000 people who made updates through the Texas.gov site, like changing your address. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office telling me that the problem is now resolved and the registered voters caught up in this glitch. They will be able to vote. Now, this problem just follows another I.T. glitch by a DPS program that happened a few weeks ago. You may remember several thousand people, new voter registrations were kind of held up, put into limbo and then found and then dumped on the county clerk. Since in a very short amount of time, they were able to clear up this backlog. Rudy, the secretary of state also providing you with an update on just how many people are registered to vote. And it sounds like it's a pretty big number, right? It is a very big number. We're told just over 19 million people register to vote in Texas. We're told that that is a 2% increase from the eligible number to vote in the March primary. So a lot of more folks registering. And then a 2.2% increase from the general election back in 24. Alec? Rudy Kosky, thank you.