Early voting ends Tuesday for the June 11 City Council Place 3 election runoff between Margot Clarke and Jennifer Kim.
Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir encouraged voters last Friday to take advantage of early voting and said the turnout level this year has been comparable to the last city runoff in June 2003.
"All registered voters have a chance to participate and make a difference in the outcome of this election, even if they didn't vote in the first round," DeBeauvoir said in a written statement.
Since the polls opened for early voting May 25, 2.79 percent of Austin's registered voters have turned out as of Saturday, June 4. Of the 408,768 registered, 11,394 have voted in the runoff.
With only one week left until the Saturday election, campaign managers for Clarke and Kim have said that either candidate has a fair shot of pulling through in the runoff. In May, Clarke received 13.11 percent more votes than Kim and missed winning with a majority by about 10 percent.
Elliott McFadden, campaign manager for Clarke, said the campaign is confident that Clarke has a good shot of defeating Kim again, but is not assuming anything. They have been focusing on getting supporters to the polls.
"We feel positive," McFadden said. "But we are not taking anything for granted."
Kim's campaign manager, Amy Everhart, said Kim has support all over the city and has raised money throughout Austin as well. She said they feel strongly about Kim's chances to come back and win in the runoff.
"We're assuming both have gone down to zero," Everhart said. "There is no clear advantage at this point."
Everhart and McFadden said they have seen support increase since Kim and Clarke entered the runoff. Both attribute the increase to voters' response to the election and each candidate's individual messages to the public.
"There seems to be a buzz about the election," Everhart said.
Since the election in May, the board for the Travis County Democratic Women have voted to endorse both candidates and show their support in a newsletter they send to about 7,000 members. Anne McAfee, a member of TCDW, said they have received calls from people asking who they should vote for, and because the board voted to endorse Kim and Clarke, TCDW cannot tell members to choose one candidate over the other.
McAfee also said she believes either candidate has a good chance of winning. However, she said Clarke's advantage over Kim in May could be a handicap for Clarke this week because voters may assume she will have that advantage again and won't come out to vote a second time.
"It really depends on who turns up at polls," she said.
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