New School of Public Affairs Report Shows Harris County Voters Give High Marks to Harris County Election Authorities

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2025

A new report by the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University examines Harris County voters’ 2024 voting experience, the reasons why some Harris County registered voters did not turn out to vote in 2024, and the extent to which Harris County voters and non-voters were contacted by partisan and non-partisan groups during the fall 2024 campaign season.

Two-thirds (65%) of Harris County voters who cast a ballot in the November 2024 election rated their voting experience as excellent, while 30% rated their experience as good, 5% as fair and 0% as poor.  This positive experience was bipartisan, with 66% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats reporting that their 2024 voting experience was excellent.

More than three-fifths (62%) of November 2024 Harris County voters believe that the November 2024 election process in Harris County was run and administered very well, with 32% believing it was run somewhat well, 4% not too well, and 2% not at all well. Once again, this positive evaluation was bipartisan, with 68% of Democratic and 58% of Republican Harris County voters saying that the November 2024 elections in Harris County were run very well.

Dr. Michael O. Adams, the founding director of the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University, noted that while under past election administrators Harris County’s election process was at times problematic, “under the current leadership of Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, elections in Harris County have been very well run in the eyes of Harris County voters, with a substantial majority of Democrats and Republicans reporting an excellent voting experience last fall.”

The report finds that among Harris County registered voters who did not turn out to vote in the November 2024 election, the most common major reasons given for why they did not vote was that they didn’t like any of the candidates (45% listed this as a major reason), they believe their vote doesn’t matter (42%), and they were worried their vote wouldn’t be counted (33%).  While 91% of these non-voters possess a Texas Driver’s License and two-fifths have a U.S. Passport, 5% indicated that they do not possess any of the seven acceptable forms of photo identification which can be used as proof of identity when voting in-person in Texas. And, these 5% of non-voters cited their lack of required photo identification as the biggest reason why they did not vote in the November 2024 election.

Among other findings:

• Nearly nine out of ten voters (88%) and two-thirds of non-voters (66%) said they received an election-related communication from a partisan or non-partisan group during the fall of 2024, with far and away the most common mode of contact being a text message.
• Only 10% and 8% of November 2024 voters respectively attended either a virtual or in-person political campaign event in the fall of 2024, while only 3% and 2% attended either an in-person or virtual non-partisan election event.
• 91% of voters and 82% of non-voters said that the October 2024 rally in Houston for Kamala Harris that was headlined by Beyoncé had no effect on their likelihood of turning out to vote, with the remainder split relatively evenly between those who said it decreased and increased their likelihood of voting.

The full report can be found via this link. The representative survey of Harris County registered voters upon which the report is based was conducted between March 22 and March 28 in English and Spanish, and has a sample size of 600 and a margin of error of +/- 4.00%. 

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