FORT WORTH, Texas -- If you've ever felt your vote doesn't matter, you need to hear from this man.
"The only polling we did was getting a sense of what the neighbors felt," said Clyde Picht, a former Fort Worth city council member.
The year was '97, the position was a Fort Worth City Council Seat District 6.
"Some of my campaign people were nervous as cats out there -- walking up and down the street," Picht said.
Picht, the underdog, won that race by just ten votes, earning him the nickname "Land Clyde."
"I was elated to win. We worked hard and we didn't take anyone for granted," Picht said.
That was 19 years ago. Two decades later, there's a very interesting trend in deep red Tarrant County. Click here to view early voting numbers.
In 2014, more than 64,000 people participated in early voting in Tarrant County -- 31 percent of those voters were Democrats. This year, 80,000 people voted and 40 percent of those voters were Democrats. It's an increase in both the voting population and the democratic vote.
"They're the party in power right now, and so many of the Republican positions are not being contested right now," Picht said.
Despite these growing numbers, Tarrant County remains one of the largest Republican strongholds in the state.
"It's really easy to spend somebody else's money -- for all these programs and so forth, and what do we get out of it the average person -- very little," said Bob Weidman, a Tarrant County voter.
"I think people should vote, a lot of people complain, but they don't go out and vote," Weidman continued.
That's the advice that a growing number of Democrats in Tarrant County seem to be following.