Record 15.1 million Texans registered to vote in November election

Texas registered a record-breaking 15,100,824 people to vote in the November election, the secretary of state’s office said Wednesday.

That's about 85,000 more than the office's preliminary estimate last week, and 862,388 more than were registered in time for the March primaries. About 78 percent of Texas' voting-age population is registered to vote in November, according to the secretary of state’s office.

There was a last-minute surge in applications ahead of the Oct. 11 deadline, the office said.  

“It’s impossible to pinpoint a single reason that voter registration may have increased,” Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state, told The Texas Tribune. “Traditionally, presidential elections attract a lot of attention, especially when there is not [an] incumbent in the White House. Also, Texas is a growing state, and population increases likely contributed to the increase to some degree.” 

In 2012, Texas registered 13,646,226 voters, 75 percent of the voting-age population. In 2008, the number was 13,575,062, 77 percent of the voting-age population. 

This year, the three counties with the most registered voters are the state's most populous: Harris, Dallas and Tarrant, according to the secretary of state's office. The three counties registered 2.2 million, 1.2 million and 1 million voters respectively.

Read more:

• Texas registered a record 15 million people people to vote. This number exceeds the state's registration numbers in 2012 by more than a million voters.
• Texas ranked eighth-to-last in voter turnout for the presidential primaries.
• Registering new people to vote is terrific, as far as it goes. But it doesn't mean more people are going to actually cast votes.