Some 25,000 people cast ballots in the last three days of early voting for Saturday’s municipal election, which ended yesterday. That put the final total at 57,320, which compares to 37,237 in the 2007 Trinity election, 58,669 in the 2005 strong mayor referendum, and 48,276 in the mayoral election in 2007.

In other words, people have started paying attention. If past trends hold, where early turnout is about one-third of the total turnout, we’ll see a decent number of people vote for a municipal election.

Sign up for our newsletter!

* indicates required

So what does this mean? A few thoughts after the jump: