Off the Kuff: Election 2008 Archives

Precinct analysis: The Richmond Rail Effect 2008

Back in 2006, I did a series of posts that examined CD07 election results in the precincts surrounding Richmond Avenue and the route that was proposed at the time for that stretch of the Universities line to try and answer a question originally raised by Rich Connelly about whether support for rail on Richmond would be a loser in that area. My conclusion was not only did Jim Henley not lose votes to John Culberson in these precincts, he likely gained votes, and thus his support for rail on Richmond was an asset, not a liability. Even though rail was essentially a non-issue this year, I figured as long as I was knee-deep in precinct data, I might as well take a look back to see how Michael Skelly stacked up. Here's the data for the last three elections:



2004

Pcnct Ballots  Culb      Pct  Mrtnez      Pct   C/M Pct M/C Pct

===============================================================

39       1809   473   26.15%    1187   65.62%    28.49%  71.51%

60       1625   422   25.97%    1027   63.20%    29.12%  70.88%

123       866   236   27.25%     544   62.82%    30.26%  69.74%

139      1688   773   45.79%     767   45.44%    50.19%  49.81%

177      1024   635   62.01%     310   30.27%    67.20%  32.80%

178      1346   905   67.24%     328   24.37%    73.40%  26.60%

233      1597   837   52.41%     610   38.20%    57.84%  42.16%

569      1791  1065   59.46%     685   38.25%    60.86%  39.14%

802       237    46   19.41%     162   68.35%    22.12%  77.88%

Total   11983  5392   45.00%    5620   46.90%    48.96%  51.04%



2006

Pcnct Ballots  Culb      Pct  Henley      Pct   C/H Pct H/C Pct

===============================================================

39       1273   246   19.32%     958   75.26%    20.43%  79.57%

60       1050   202   19.24%     790   75.24%    20.36%  79.64%

123       513   117   22.81%     364   70.96%    24.32%  75.68%

139      1061   423   39.87%     564   53.16%    42.86%  57.14%

177       658   403   61.25%     237   36.02%    62.97%  37.03%

178       968   697   72.00%     231   23.86%    75.11%  24.89%

233      1583   791   49.97%     696   43.97%    53.19%  46.81%

569      1076   556   51.67%     454   42.19%    55.05%  44.95%

802       205    42   20.49%     149   72.68%    21.99%  78.01%

Total    8387  3477   41.46%    4443   52.97%    43.90%  56.10%



2008

Pcnct Ballots  Culb      Pct  Skelly      Pct   C/S Pct S/C Pct

===============================================================

39       1800   316   17.56%    1310    72.78%   19.43%  80.57%

60       1524   372   24.41%    1048    68.77%   26.20%  73.80%

123       913   222   24.32%     625    68.46%   26.21%  73.79%

139      1689   677   40.08%     921    54.53%   42.37%  57.63%

177      1076   587   54.55%     437    40.61%   57.32%  42.68%

178      1395   911   65.30%     452    32.40%   66.84%  33.16%

233      2844  1309   46.03%    1370    48.17%   48.86%  51.14%

569      2175  1075   49.43%     995    45.75%   51.93%  48.07%

802       208    47   22.60%     142    68.27%   24.87%  75.13%

Total   13624  5516   40.49%    7300    53.58%   43.04%  56.96%

As before, "Pct" refers to the percent of the total ballot, which includes undervotes and votes for the Libertarian candidate. "C/x Pct" and "x/C Pct" are the straight-up Culberson versus Martinez/Henley/Skelly percentages. Precincts 39, 60, 123, and 802 are in Montrose, 178 is Afton Oaks, the epicenter of anti-rail activity back in the day, 177 and 569 are Lynn Park, Highland Village, and St. George's Place, all of which border Afton Oaks, and 139 and 233 are Greenway Plaza.

Overall, there's nothing too exciting here. Skelly lost a few points in 60, 123, and 802, but he had a pretty high standard to meet. He gained a little or more everywhere else, and flipped 233 to blue. He topped Henley by a small margin, with his biggest gains coming in Culberson's strongest turf. Given Skelly's gains in the district as a whole, that's about what you'd expect.

So there you have it. I didn't really have a point to make with this post, I just felt it needed to be included, at least before someone asked me about it. I figure that as there are still hurdles to be cleared for the Universities line, and construction is still at least a year away, this may become an issue again in 2010. Just keep these numbers in mind when Culberson or one of his proxies claims that he has the support of the voters in the area.

11/20/08 | permalink | comments [0]

Precinct analysis: CD07

The race for Congressional District 7 was one of the top campaigns in Harris County this cycle. It attracted a lot of local and national interest, various polls showed it to be competitive, and there was a boatload of money spent on TV ads. In the end, the race was closer than it had been in previous years, but was still a double-digit win for incumbent John Culberson over challenger Michael Skelly, 56.95 to 43.05 in the straight-up R-versus-D matchup.

A lot of people thought Skelly would do better than this - I know I thought the final result would be closer. It's important to remember, however, that CD07 was nobody's idea of an even potentially competitive district four years ago, and that even in losing a lot of progress can be made. Let's take a look at the numbers. Here's how Skelly did in comparison to Barack Obama, Rick Noriega, Adrian Garcia, Jim Henley (who was on the ballot this time in a successful bid for HCDE Trustee), the average Democratic judicial candidate, and the Democratic State Rep candidate for the relevant districts:



Dist  Obama Noriega Skelly Garcia Henley County  StRep

======================================================

CD07  41.11   40.05  43.05  45.55  41.07  38.32    n/a

126   33.49   33.24  35.44  39.21  34.16  32.49  30.61

130   36.01   36.25  38.13  42.22  37.28  35.56    n/a

132   42.49   42.18  43.78  47.58  43.73  42.01    n/a

133   40.00   38.77  40.40  44.28  39.59  37.13  36.58

134   49.35   46.90  52.19  52.06  48.38  43.94  56.67

135   38.70   38.87  40.49  44.78  39.80  37.94  37.82

136   32.14   30.27  34.44  35.61  30.62  28.32    n/a

137   60.13   59.21  61.77  62.61  60.78  58.78    n/a

138   37.65   38.59  38.99  45.25  39.23  36.78  34.56

146   48.52   48.80  51.30  54.62  50.93  46.43    n/a

147   66.03   64.19  67.31  67.65  65.39  63.15    n/a

149   42.41   41.18  41.94  46.06  42.49  39.89  39.05

Other than Garcia, who is in a class by himself and who led him everywhere except HD134, and Obama and Henley in HD149, Skelly led every other Democrat on the ballot wherever they were in CD07. With the exception of Ellen Cohen in HD134, he did better than every State Rep candidate who faced a Republican as well - Chad Khan (126), Kristi Thibaut (133), Trey Fleming (135), Ginny McDavid (138), and Hubert Vo (149). I have to say, I find it hard to find fault with that kind of performance.

Another way of looking at this is to map the way CD07 has evolved since 2004. Here's Skelly against his predecessors:



Dist  Martinez  Henley  Skelly

==============================

CD07     34.19   39.36   43.05

134      43.03   52.06   52.19

Not134   31.30   34.72   40.24

The trend is pretty clear. What isn't clear from these numbers is just how much better Skelly's performance was in the HD134 portion of CD07 than Henley's in 2006. (HD134 is almost, but not quite, entirely within CD07. There's one substantive precinct in Al Green's CD09, and one precinct with basically no voters there as well. For these purposes, when I say HD134, assume I'm referring to the all-but-one-precincts that are within CD07.) The difference here is that HD134 was a lot more Republican than you might have thought it would be. In 2006, seven Democratic candidates out of 19 got a majority of the vote in 134 - Henley, Cohen, Bill Moody, Jim Sharp, Richard Garcia, Mary Kay Green. and Andrew Burks. The average countywide Dem received 48.42% of the vote there. In 2008, exactly three Democrats cleared 50% - Cohen, Skelly, and Adrian Garcia. Henley got 48.38%; Sharp got 47.93%. The average Democratic judicial candidate, as we have already seen, got 44.08%. What that means is that while Henley was exceeding the average in HD134 by three and a half points, Skelly topped it by eight. That's mighty impressive.

(In case you're curious, by the way, the average Democratic judicial candidate got 43.60% in HD134. That puts a slightly different spin on this year's judicial results than I had suggested before, as John Kerry got 45.01%. It may just be that the voters there lean more Republican at the local level than they do at the top of the ticket. If so, the difference this year was profound.)

By the way, since there's been so much fixation on straight-ticket voting since the election, Culberson beat Skelly in the straight ticket votes, 103,445 to 63,826. Skelly beat Culberson among those who voted individual races, 59,729 to 58,652. Not that it really means anything, since despite all the aversions cast on them for the judicial races, straight-ticket voters are still voters. But I thought I'd point it out.

Couple more points. You may recall earlier this year when Culberson said his race was the most important on the ballot for local Republicans. Here's how he described it to Miya Shay:

[He] told me yesterday that he sees the District 7 race as a "Firewall" for county wide Republicans. "I believe that if we don't get my re-election numbers into the 60s percentage, then every Republican in Harris County could lose." Culberson says that's why the Democratic party is running such a rich guy, basically to beat him down.. and bring the Repub party along. In essence, he says he can still win his seat, while Harris County Repubs lose all of theirs.

Give the devil his due, because he was right: He didn't get into the 60s, and most Republicans lost. It's very simple - there are a lot of voters in his district, mostly in the western end of it, and they usually vote heavily Republican. But not so much any more, as we've been seeing, and it had an effect both in the overlapping State House districts as well as in Harris County as a whole.

What will happen next in CD07? Alan Bernstein suggested that since Culberson (and Mike McCaul in CD10) faced his toughest challenge yet successfully, he may get a breather:

Seeing that the Obama push and the Democratic money was not enough to turn those districts the other way, potential Democratic challengers for 2010 may balk at taking on these House members.

That's certainly possible, and it was my immediate thought when I saw the election night returns. But who knows? The trend is clear, and while there won't be Barack Obama on the ticket in 2010, there might be Bill White, who would presumably actually campaign here. Especially if someone notices the purpling of HDs 126, 132, and 135, there may well be more Democratic challenges in that part of the county. I think Culberson is unlikely to see a challenge like Skelly's in two years' time - unless Skelly himself decides to try again, of course - but I do think he's seen his last easy race, until and unless redistricting rescues him.

Finally, a word about HD134, which is a key part of this district. I knew HD134 was mostly Republican in 2006, and I expected it to be at best 50-50 this time around. I was surprised to see how relatively red it turned out to be. Which is why it continues to amaze me that the Republicans totally punted on giving Cohen a serious challenge. They had a candidate who was attractive on paper, but he never did a thing, and wound up running more than ten points behind the GOP average in the district. I remember Bill Kelly, who had been Cohen's campaign manager in 2006, telling me early on that Cohen would work the district as hard as she'd done before, because there were a lot of voters there who had not yet ever cast a ballot for her, and they were not going to take any of them for granted. To say the least, he was right about that. My guess is that things are more like 2006 than 2008 in 2010, but I bet Team Cohen won't take that for granted, either.

11/19/08 | permalink | comments [1]

Precinct analysis: The declining Republican brand

I'm just going to dive into this one, because the numbers pretty much speak for themselves. The following is a comparison between 2004 and 2008 in Harris County in various Republican districts. I'm comparing John Kerry's performance to Barack Obama's, Guy Clark's to Adrian Garcia's in the Sheriff's race, and three candidates who were on the ballot each year, for similar but not exactly the same offices - JR Molina, who was the high Democratic scorer statewide in 2004; Kathy Stone, who was the top votegetter and percentage performer for Dems in Harris County in 2004; and Jim Sharp, who broke through to win a First District Court of Appeals race this year. Here are the numbers:



2004

Dist   Kerry   Clark  Molina  Stone  Sharp

==========================================

CD07    35.7    32.6    34.8   37.5   35.7

CD22    35.6    32.3    38.4   36.2   35.7

SD11    32.0    32.5    34.4   35.7   35.2

126     32.0    31.2    32.9   34.0   33.4

127     27.0    26.8    28.3   29.5   29.3

128     31.8    33.5    35.5   36.5   36.7

129     32.2    31.7    33.4   35.1   34.0

130     23.4    23.0    24.2   25.1   25.1

132     28.8    28.9    30.3   31.3   31.2

133     43.9    42.4    44.0   46.1   44.5

134     45.6    40.6    43.3   47.3   44.3

135     33.9    33.3    35.5   36.3   36.3

136     29.8    26.1    28.1   31.5   28.9

137     55.3    54.8    57.1   58.0   56.8

138     39.7    37.4    40.3   42.5   40.8

144     35.5    37.3    39.9   40.4   40.5

145     57.0    59.7    65.1   63.3   62.3

148     58.3    57.4    62.0   62.3   61.1

149     46.6    46.1    47.9   48.8   47.9

150     26.7    26.5    28.1   29.2   29.0



2008

Dist   Obama  Garcia  Molina  Stone  Sharp

==========================================

CD07    41.1    45.6    39.1   40.6   41.1

CD22    36.2    44.0    38.0   39.3   39.6

SD11    35.3    43.1    37.1   38.5   38.8

126     41.9    46.8    41.7   42.7   42.9

127     31.5    38.0    32.0   33.7   33.8

128     33.8    42.4    37.6   39.3   39.9

129     36.3    42.2    36.1   37.6   37.8

130     28.8    34.4    28.2   29.5   29.8

132     40.1    45.6    40.4   41.9   41.9

133     52.2    56.0    51.4   52.4   52.7

134     49.5    52.2    45.5   47.1   48.1

135     41.3    47.6    41.5   42.8   42.8

136     33.9    37.6    30.1   32.7   33.3

137     61.8    66.7    63.1   63.5   63.7

138     44.3    52.8    45.0   46.4   46.7

144     40.6    50.4    45.0   45.8   45.9

145     62.3    75.6    71.4   69.5   69.7

148     60.0    69.6    62.8   62.5   63.2

149     54.7    58.8    55.2   55.9   55.8

150     35.1    41.7    35.5   37.0   37.1

If these numbers don't make your eyes bug out, I don't know what would. Here's what I see when I look at them.

- John Kerry scored 44.55% in 2004, Barack Obama got 50.42%. That's a six-point increase overall, but as you can see the increase was not uniform. The gains in HDs 126, 132, and 150 particularly stand out to me. This is the flip side of the coin I've been talking about: Just as the Dems could not have made this huge stride in Harris County without doing so much better in traditionally red areas, so can the Republicans no longer hope to dominate county politics if they're not running up the score in places like those. While there may have been a turnout boost for the Dems this year that was aided by the dynamics of a Dem-friendly environment and an inspirational candidate, the trends that led to these numbers aren't going away.

- Despite winning at least one marginal state house seat every year since the new map was rolled out in 2002, the Democrats do not have any more seats at risk now than they have had in years past. Scott Hochberg, who was supposed to have been drawn out of the Lege in 2002, is safe. Hubert Vo is safe. Ellen Cohen is likely safe, even though her district isn't blue like those two. Kristi Thibaut will have a tough fight in 2010, but that's the only pickup opportunity the Rs will have, and they'll have to defend Ken Legler in HD144 while worrying about someone emerging to knock off Patricia Harless, Gary Elkins, or Bill Callegari. I know which position I'd rather be in.

- Even if the battlefield in 2010 is just 133 and 144, how will the Republicans protect their incumbents in 2011 for the next decade? Take a look at that Stiles map again, and ask yourself how they keep those three safe going forward. I think it's impossible, and they'd be better off trying to consolidate rather than spread what remains of their base too thin in what will surely be a futile attempt to maximize what they can retain.

- And while you're at it, ponder how a new Congressional district might fit into the western part of the county. My guess is that CD07 will shift back to the farther reaches of Harris, perhaps even stretch into Fort Bend, and we'll see a reconstituted version of the old 25th arise to once again represent central Houston with a Democrat.

- Just to keep beating this point into submission, the Democratic gains from the strong-R districts played a huge role in the bluing of Harris County. If you just take HDs 126, 132, 135, and 150, and have them perform at 2004 levels instead of what we saw this year, by my rough estimate the Dems would have lost about 20,000 votes, with the Republicans gaining that much. That not only swings nearly every race back to the GOP - by my reckoning, only Adrian Garcia, Debby Kerner, Jim Henley, and Kathy Stone could withstand a 40,000-vote hit to their totals and still win for sure - it's more than we could squeeze out of the Democratic districts. If we could have jacked up turnout in the four Hispanic districts - HDs 140, 143, 145, and 148 - to the same 67% level that the strong Rs performed at, we'd have gotten about 45,000 more voters total. But since about a third of those voters would be going Republican, the Dems would net 15,000 votes. Doing that on top of what we did this year would net us three more judges - everyone but Ashish Mahendru - plus Brad Bradford, but David Mincberg and Diane Trautman would still fall short. Again, the point is that Democratic voters are everywhere in the county, and we cannot be narrow in our focus when it comes to turnout strategy.

- For all these reasons, I strongly disagree with Dave Mann and his claim that the election was a failure due to poor Democratic turnout. We did get a boost in Democratic turnout, it was just spread out over the entire county instead of being concentrated in a few familiar places. Which as I've just said is a good thing, because we wouldn't have won squat otherwise. I agree with Greg, and with Ed Martin and Matt Angle: Democratic turnout was fine, we won partly because we found new sources of Democratic performance, including in places we weren't really looking, and we did about as well as we could reasonably expect under the circumstances. For crying out loud, we gained six points and nearly 90,000 votes in four years. That's outstanding.

I think I'm about out of steam here. Tell me what you think, and I'll have more to come soon.

UPDATE: Burt Levine's comment reminds me that I forgot to explain my inclusion of HDs 145 and 148 in this comparison. Simply put, as you can see by Kerry's score in those districts, they might not have appeared as solidly Democratic in 2004 as you might have thought they were. Whatever the case then, it's not the case now, and so I included them to further illustrate how the GOP's fortunes have receded.

11/18/08 | permalink | comments [1]

Meet the new District Clerk

Loren Jackson, our newly-elected District Clerk, will be sworn in this afternoon to fill out the unexpired portion of former Clerk Charles Bacarisse's term. He gets to start right away instead of waiting till January because it's an unexpired term. The ceremony will take place at 3 PM in the Jury Assembly Room at 1019 Congress. See Stace for the invitation. And congrats to Loren Jackson, who will officially become Harris County's first serving countywide Democratic elected official in a decade.

11/18/08 | permalink | comments [1]

Election date set for SD17

And the winner is...December 16.

Gov. Rick Perry today announced a special runoff election to fill the vacancy in Senate District 17 to be held on Dec. 16, 2008. A special election to fill the seat left vacant by the resignation of Sen. Kyle Janek was held during the November 4 general election; however no candidate received a majority of the votes, as mandated by state law.

Early voting will run from December 8 through December 12.

Not December 20, as I had surmised (I had this funny idea that runoffs and special elections were generally held on Saturdays - not sure if I was nuts to think that or not), but still, nine days before Christmas, and not a single minute of voting to be held on a weekend. You think the Republicans might be hoping for miniscule turnout here? If you want to help combat that, get thee to a Bell campaign HQ location and do what you can.

11/17/08 | permalink | comments [0]

Precinct analysis: The Obama effect

Ready for some precinct data analysis? Let's get started. There will be a lot of these entries, because there's a lot of interesting data. Today let's take a look at how Barack Obama's performance in Harris County compared to the county Democratic judicial slate, since it was conventional wisdom that as Obama went, so went the judicial hopefuls.

The first question to consider is the coattail effect. I've written before that in 2004, Republican judicial candidates lost a lot more votes compared to George Bush than Democratic candidates did compared to John Kerry. My reason for this is that if you were voting for John Kerry in 2004, you were a real true Democrat, and you went on down the line. Bush, however, seemed likely to attract voters who were only interested in his race, and that was borne out by the numbers:

2004 avg GOP 536,000, Bush 584,000, dropoff 48,000
2004 avg Dem 470,000, Kerry 475,000, dropoff 5,000

Bush may have lifted the tide for the incumbent judges in 2004, but they didn't really need it. There were plenty of Republican voters for them to win. This year, not so much:

2008 avg GOP 540,170, McCain 569,860, dropoff 29,690
2008 avg Dem 558,324, Obama 587,538, dropoff 29,214

Both judicial slates saw an equivalent dropoff from the Presidential vote. This year there were more Democrats voting overall, and that was the difference maker for most. Not for all, since there was a 44,000+ vote gap between the top Democratic judicial candidate and the bottom one, but for 23 of 27.

That's at the countywide level. Going down to the State Rep district level, you begin to see some patterns. For the most part, you'd expect the average judicial candidate to lose around 1000 votes from the Presidential level in each HD. For many of them, what actually happened was in line with that expectation, adjusted for relative levels of turnout and partisan makeup. In fact, in 17 of the 25 State House districts, the judicial candidates received a percentage of the vote that was within 1.25 points of the Presidentials. One of the eight exceptions was HD142, which is an African-American district. In HD142, where Obama received 79.78% of the vote, Democrats voted down the line at a very high rate, whereas the Republican judicials lost over ten percent of the meager vote total McCain got, from 8401 votes for McCain to 7506 for the judges. The result there was an 81.35% share for the average Democratic judicial candidate.

The remaining seven districts that defied the pattern had some shared characteristics with each other. They are:

1. The Bubba districts

In HDs 128 and 144, which cover places in eastern Harris County like Baytown and Pasadena, Barack Obama did significantly worse than the rest of the Democratic ticket:



Dist  McCain   Obama  M Pct  O Pct  GOP avg  Dem avg  GOP %  Dem %

==================================================================

128   27,322  13,973  66.16  33.84   24,621   14,542  62.87  37.13

144   23,656  16,167  59.40  40.60   21,172   16,563  56.11  43.89

Here, the GOP suffered its biggest and third-biggest dropoffs (they lost 2,517 votes on average in HD127, but Dems lost 1000 votes as well, which was proportionate to the percentages), while the Dems gained votes in each case. These are working-class districts with a white voting majority, both friendly to the GOP. If Obama had any problems locally with that demographic here, these districts are where you can see the effect.

2. The Hispanic districts

There are four State Rep districts in Harris County that are represented by Hispanic politicians - HDs 140 (Rep.-elect Armando Walle), 143 (Rep. Ana Hernandez), 145 (Rep-elect Carol Alvarado), and 148 (Rep. Jessica Farrar). In all four, Barack Obama received over 60% of the vote. But in three of them, the downballot Democrats did significantly better:



Dist  McCain   Obama  M Pct  O Pct  GOP avg  Dem avg  GOP %  Dem %

==================================================================

140    6,396  11,450  35.84  64.16    5,111   11,943  29.97  70.03

143    6,729  10,299  39.52  60.48    5,270   10,982  32.43  67.57

145    7,574  12,508  37.72  62.28    5,999   13,082  31.44  68.56

148   13,421  20,137  39.99  60.01   12,198   19,119  38.95  61.05

I'm including HD148 for comparison, even though I consider it to be one of the non-exceptional districts. If there were any remaining Hillary diehards who refused to embrace Obama, I'd have to say this is where they'd be found. Clinton dominated these districts in the primary, so perhaps some of her loyalists refused to push the button for Obama. That did not carry down the ballot, however, and it wasn't just the judicials who did better than Obama. Everyone from Adrian Garcia (76.2% in HD140, 73.2 in 143, and 75.6 in 145) to Rick Noriega (71.0, 69.3, 73.0) to the statewide Dems, the appeals court candidates, and the rest of the county slate did better than Obama. Maybe McCain still had some unique appeal to these voters, but my guess is they just never got as on board the Obama Express as others did. I'll refrain from making any remarks about the lack of effort from the Obama campaign to reach these voters like what they did in some other states and move on to the last group. I will, however, make the point that it was only Barack Obama who really underperformed here. Whatever antipathy some voters may have had towards the Presidential nominee was limited to him. Be sure to look at Greg's take on this as well.

3. The Lawyer districts

Whereas those five districts showed an increase in votes for the downballot Dems over what Obama got, the last two had the exact reverse outcome:



Dist  McCain   Obama  M Pct  O Pct  GOP avg  Dem avg  GOP %  Dem %

==================================================================

134   35,430  34,740  50.49  49.51   35,977   28,357  55.92  44.08

136   37,958  19,490  66.07  33.93   37,472   16,391  69.57  30.43

These were the only districts in which the GOP judicial incumbents gained votes over John McCain. They weren't the only ones to do so - John Cornyn did, though Rick Noriega lost about half as many votes as the Dem judicials, and thus was closer percentagewise; Wallace Jefferson also gained votes, as did a couple of the appeals court judges in HD134 - but the effect is striking. My hypothesis here is that these are two of the most affluent districts around, covering places like River Oaks, West U, Bellaire, the Galleria area, and Memorial, and they probably have more lawyers per capita than the rest of the county. It's not a shock to me that they might have preferred the status quo on the local benches at a higher rate than everyone else, if only to preserve the devils they knew. As foolish as the prediction-making business is, especially this far out, I'll bet that the new judicial incumbents perform much like their ballotmates in four years' time, and for the same reason. Someone please make a note to remind me to check that in 2012.

And finally, since there's been so much written lately about "funny names", I present the following:



Dist   Obama  Pereira  Pierre  Mahendru  Murray  Mincberg  Trautman

===================================================================

128    33.84    35.80   36.10     33.73   35.35     33.19     33.78

144    40.60    42.88   42.69     40.20   41.99     38.80     39.15

140    64.16    70.44   69.12     66.51   67.63     64.86     64.35

143    60.48    67.53   66.37     63.60   65.29     62.29     61.03

145    62.28    69.21   67.39     64.32   65.73     62.14     61.10

148    60.01    60.55   59.46     58.74   58.50     53.42     54.23

134    49.51    42.11   41.65     42.50   41.76     39.69     39.59

136    33.93    28.94   28.95     28.40   28.66     28.03     27.37

Other  51.86    50.82   51.12     49.57   50.55     47.96     48.57

You can make of all that what you will. I note with some interest that Ashish Mahendru did better than the three other unsuccessful Democratic judicial candidates in HD134; perhaps that's a statement about incumbent Sharon McCally, who had the lowest Republican performance in Harris County in 2004 when Kathy Stone opposed her.

How's that for a start? Much more to come soon, so stay tuned.

11/17/08 | permalink | comments [1]

Time to gear up for Chris Bell

There's still one more election to go before we can put 2008 to bed, and that's the runoff for the special election in SD17. Democratic candidates got a majority of the vote on November 4, and Chris Bell came out with a 27,000 vote lead over Joan Huffman, and garnered more votes than Huffman and Austen Furst combined. I see a real sense of urgency among local Dems to finish the job on this race, and I have a good feeling about it going into the race.

We don't yet know when the actual runoff will be - you can put my marker down for December 20, as I'm sure Governor Perry wants this to be as low a turnout affair as possible - but campaign activity is well underway. If you're in Fort Bend, the Bell campaign will officially open its local headquarters there this Saturday from 1 to 3 PM. The address is 869 Dulles Avenue, Ste. E in Stafford, which is where the Lampson HQ was before. Phone banking is going on now, so if you can't wait till Saturday for the pomp, head over today for the work. Let's get that Democratic caucus in the Senate up to 13.

11/17/08 | permalink | comments [1]

A word on voter registration numbers

After I published my post about where and when the vote was in Harris County, I got an email from HCDP Chair Gerry Birnberg regarding the voter registration numbers. He writes:

One thing to watch out for as you proceed with your analysis: the voter registration numbers upon which the county clerk's "% of registered voters" numbers are based are materially wrong. Kaufman's "Cumulative Report" uses a figure for voter registration in Harris County of 1,892,656. The actual number of persons who were registered and eligible to vote on November 4 was at least 1,956,000 (probably up to 10,000 higher than that, because of the additional voters who were added to the list after early voting closed, but were eligible to vote in this election; I don't know that number, but believe it to be as high as 10,000). The reason for this difference of over 64,000 between Beverly's 1,892,656 figure and the known figure of 1,956,000 is that Beverly's figures are based on people who were actually on the rolls as of September 19 only, and were never updated after that date. This is significant because we believe that the great bulk of applications received and approved after 9/19 came from Democratic areas and voters, because we had an active voter registration effort underway while the Republicans did not, to my knowledge.

Why this matter in the post-election analysis is two-fold. First, the conclusion that voter registration was down (compared to 2004 registration numbers) in some Democratic areas is probably incorrect. If the 64,000 post September 19 registrations were added to the totals, I suspect virtually every (if not every) Democratic area will have experienced an increase in voter registration, rather than a decline in some areas, despite the TEAM results which reduced voter registrations across the board as the voter rolls were "cleaned up" for the first time at the centralized, state level. Second, and on the negative side, however, is the fact that if correct voter registration numbers are used, there is an even smaller percentage of registered voters turnout than Ms. Kaufman's Cumulative Report indicates. (If the denominator -- registered voters -- is increased, as it should be because the 1,892,656 is incorrectly low -- the percentage resulting from dividing the number of voters who voted by the number of registered voters in any area would decrease.) In other words, we voted even a smaller percentage of registered voters in Harris County than Ms. Kaufman's Cumulative Report indicates.

That's true, and I mentioned the disparity between the voter reg numbers that were reported after the deadline previously. But please note that I'm using the September registration figures for 2004 as well, since that's what the County Clerk uses on its cumulative results page. County Clerk Kaufman's page gives a registered voter total of 1,876,296 for 2004, which is what I used to compare the 2008 numbers to. If you go to the Historic Election Results page on the Secretary of State website and do a County Canvass Report for a race that included Harris in 2004, you get 1,937,072, or about 61,000 more voters, all registered in the latter days of the campaign. I've said 2008 is a unique year in American politics, and it certainly is, but I'd bet a lot of those 61,000 late registrants in 2004 were disproportionately Democratic as well. As such, I maintain I'm comparing apples to apples here.

But look, even if you want to quibble about the numbers, the basic point remains the same. Go ahead and assume that the County Clerk's number is too low by 64,000 or so. Assign all of those voters to the Strong D districts if you want. That gets them from minus 25,000 to plus 39,000, which still lags the growth in the Strong R districts. That's using a silly assumption against data that has a similar undercount from four years ago, and it still yields the same conclusion: You cannot account for the increased Democratic share of the vote - which you may recall is on the order of 88,000 more votes than 2004 - without concluding that there must be more people voting Democratic in strong R districts. That doesn't mean we didn't have better performance in the other districts - we did, and I will demonstrate it in the coming days - it just simply means we shouldn't be myopic about where "the base" is. Our voters are everywhere, and we need to have a turnout strategy that reflects that.

11/16/08 | permalink | comments [0]

From the "Predictions that didn't quite pan out" department

While I maintain that only fools make predictions, not all predictions themselves are foolish. I think I did pretty well on mine, all things considered. But not everyone fared so well. For instance, in the comments to this post, the following prognostication was made by someone named Craig Klein:

Sheila Jackson Lee is in trouble in this election and no one seems to know it... Least of all her!

There have been significant demographic shifts in District 18 since she last had a Republican opponent.

Inner city neighborhoods in the Heights, Garden Oaks, Mid-Town and elsewhere have been redeveloped and incomes have risen.

Also, the # of African Americans living in the district has stayed basically flat while the # of Hispanics has grown by 65,000.

There were a total of 150,000 votes cast in the district in the last election.

Plus the fact that there is a significant amount of disillusionment with Sheila amongst African Americans, as illustrated by Marcus Davis' considering running against her earlier this year.

John Faulk, the Republican opponent, got a late start but, is working the street hard.

Since she has an opponent this time, she'll give up 40 to 50k votes to Republican voters, many of whom vote straight ticket. Then Faulk just needs a 50% of the new hispanics and new high income whites in the district and he's won!

Sounds great! How'd it turn out?



U. S. Representative District 18

John Faulk          REP  21,685  17.50%   39,000  20.34%

Sheila Jackson Lee  DEM  99,548  80.35%  148,204  77.31%

Mike Taylor         LIB   2,658   2.14%    4,475   2.33%

Boy, missed it by that much.

I don't want to spend too much time on this, since it was obviously silly. But as this will serve as my kickoff post for precinct data review, there are a couple of things to note. One, Jackson Lee won nearly as many votes this year as were cast in CD18 in 2004, and her percentage was better than it was 2006, when she won with only 76.62% of the vote. So, you know, so much for Craig's theory. It's actually even worse than that, since there were over 110,000 straight ticket Democratic votes cast in CD18, which as you can see would have put Jackson Lee over 50% even if those were the only votes she'd gotten. And she still got 70% of the remaining votes, so pretty much no matter how you slice it, this was a no-doubt-about-it race.

One last thing: Though Barack Obama got more votes in CD18 than Jackson Lee did (150,226 to 148,204), so did John McCain get more than John Faulk, and McCain's total was high enough at 43,109 to keep Obama's share of the vote lower than Jackson Lee's in the straight two-party matchup. Obama got 77.7% of the R/D share, Jackson Lee 79.2%. Maybe there's still a desire by some to primary her in 2010 for having supported Hillary Clinton this year, but I'd say these numbers show an awful lot of forgive-and-forget. And if that isn't happening, there's no way you'll get her out before she's ready to leave on her own terms. This is her district.

11/14/08 | permalink | comments [4]

The counting is over

All of the ballots in Harris County have now been counted, and the results of all the races remain the same.

Before Thursday, for instance, Democratic challenger Josefina Muniz Rendon was ahead of Republican state District Judge Elizabeth Ray by only 135 of the 1.1 million votes cast in the race. The Democrat's winning margin is now 520.

In the other closest race, Republican state District Judge Joseph "Tad" Halbach's margin over Democrat Goodwille Pierre shrank to 230 votes from 595.

All other county races were decided by bigger vote gaps and were not affected by the new vote totals. Democratic challengers defeated 23 of the 27 Republican judges on the ballot.

[...]

The final tallies triggered former Houston Police Chief C.O. "Brad" Bradford's concession of defeat in his race for district attorney against Republican Pat Lykos. He had been waiting for the final totals in a contest he ended up losing by less than 5,000 votes.

"I want to congratulate Judge Lykos on her victory and wish her all the best as she moves forward in the District Attorney's Office," the Democrat said after talking to Lykos by phone. "We raised a number of important issues in this campaign, and I hope these issues will continue to be discussed and resolved -- issues such as jail overcrowding, getting alternative treatment for the mentally ill and substance abusers, a public defender's office and reform of the grand jury system."

Lykos said she hopes to meet with Bradford to reminisce about the campaign and discuss ways to develop policies they agreed on, including treatment options for mentally ill accused criminals.

Seems unlikely there will be recounts, so the remaining action is in SD17 for the runoff and HD105 for the recount there. There was, however, some drama with this tally:

During the counting process, the Texas Democratic Party accused voter registrar Paul Bettencourt, a Republican, of delaying the verifications. Jim Harding, the Republican chief of a bipartisan ballot board, which made final decisions on which ballots were valid, accused Bettencourt of supplying the board with faulty records.

Bettencourt denied the allegations. After the Chronicle published Harding's statements, Bettencourt firmly asserted his denials in phone messages to Harding, the men said.

In turn, Harding alleged Thursday that Bettencourt's calls were improper attempts to influence how the ballot board did business. He discussed the messages with County Attorney First Assistant John Barnhill, who was unavailable for comment.

Bettencourt said he had merely defended his staff's performance -- without questioning the board's decision to accept some provisional ballots that Bettencourt's workers had classified as incomplete.

Harding's statements were in yesterday's story.

Republican Jim Harding, a retired Houston business executive who chairs the ballot board of about 35 people, said the counting process was delayed by faulty work by Bettencourt's staff.

The problems included hundreds of voter forms whose information the registrar's staff masked with white correction fluid and then altered with new information, Harding said.

As ballot board members determined whether ballots should be counted, he said, they wanted to have confidence in the accuracy of the registrar's research.

But "that kind of confidence is not replicated here, and then when they see this 'white-out' all over the place they get nervous," he said.

Also, the board has accepted ballots cast by voters whose registrations had been classified by Bettencourt's staff as incomplete, Harding said. In many cases records showed voters had visited state Department of Public Safety offices where they claimed to have registered to vote, Harding explained, and the ballot board is giving those voters the benefit of the doubt.

Harding said there were more errors and related voting records problems than in five previous elections in which he served on the ballot board.

Some of that will come out when the remaining claims in the Texas Democratic Party's lawsuit against Bettencourt goes forward next year. I can certainly believe Bettencourt has been putting his thumb on the scale, but I'll be a little amazed if he was careless enough about it to get caught out.

11/14/08 | permalink | comments [0]

Precinct data: Coming attractions

11/13/08 | permalink | comments [3]

Where - and when - the vote was

11/12/08 | permalink | comments [0]

Democrats sue Bettencourt over provisional ballots

11/12/08 | permalink | comments [2]

Recount in HD105

11/12/08 | permalink | comments [0]

Republicans hold HD105

11/11/08 | permalink | comments [0]

So was there an HGLBT endorsement backlash?