For the first time, more than 1 million Harris County citizens turned out to vote in a non-presidential election in the November 2018 midterm elections, according to the Harris County Clerk's office. In an election where 76 percent of voters cast straight-party ballots, several longtime Republican-held seats turned blue at both the county and state level. Early voting turnout more than doubled over the last midterm election and was less than 100,000 voters away from matching the early voting turnout of the 2016 presidential election, according to the Secretary of State’s website.