Analysis of the Mayoral race

Via Yellow Dog comes this analysis of the 2003 Houston Mayoral race. I kind of wish now that I'd looked for this earlier, because the cited paper by Richard Murray no longer appears to be posted at the stated URL. Regardless, the long passages quoted have some familiar stuff about the Sanchez and White campaigns, plus something that I hadn't heard before:

Much of the support Orlando Sanchez received in 2001 election was an anti-Lee Brown vote. In a number of polls done in 2002 and 2003, only about 60% of the respondents who said they had voted for Sanchez in 2001 said they expected to vote for him in 2001.

I had long believed that Sanchez wouldn't get the same level of Hispanic support that he did in 2001, but this is the first I've heard that his support across the board was so shallow. I'd love to know where these polls are that Dr. Murray is talking about. I for one wouldn't have given in to the conventional-wisdom description of Sanchez as the frontrunner if I'd known this.

One other item for your consideration, for which I'll try to clean up the formatting:

                Estimated Vote Share in Different Voter 

                       Precinct Groupings in 2003


                      General Election          Runoff 

                      White% Sanchez% Turner%   White% Sanchez%

Racial/Ethnic Anglos     46%      48%      6%      48%      52%

Blacks                   18%       1%     81%      96%       4%

Hispanics                46%      47%      7%      56%      44%

Asians                   70%      25%      5%      72%      28%

No matter how you slice it, that's what I call broad-based support for Bill White.

UPDATE: Greg found Richard Murray's full report (PDF). I did come across this link yesterday, but it came up blank on my screen. Oh, well.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on December 29, 2003 to Election 2003 | TrackBack