Where the votes are: HD136

Continuing my series on blue precincts within red State House districts (see here for the first installment), today I’m looking at HD136, where incumbent Beverly Woolley defeated Democrat Scott Brann with just over 70% of the vote. Unlike HD126, HD136 has basically no genuinely blue areas. It has only three precincts that were carried by Brann. Here they are:

Pcnt RVs Votes Turnout Brann Brann% Sharp Sharp% Henley Henley% ==================================================================== 179 1749 421 24.07% 189 50.9 211 55.4 N/A N/A 272 2415 506 20.95% 233 51.1 243 51.7 232 48.6 807 2127 387 18.19% 242 67.4 256 69.4 N/A N/A

(As before, “Sharp” is Jim Sharp, the top Democratic votegetter in Harris County; “Henley” is Democrat Jim Henley, whose CD07 covers most of HD136.)

Only Precinct 807 qualifies as a place you’d clearly want to target for GOTV operations. Naturally, it had the lowest turnout in the district – overall turnout was 42%, with quite a few red precincts topping 50%. That doesn’t mean I think the other two precincts should be ignored, but it does suggest that perhaps a different approach might be needed to ensure that any new voters turned out are voters you actually wanted. I’m not an expert in those matters, but there’s plenty of those folks around. My task here is to point out where the opportunities are, and I say Precincts 179 and 272 are opportunities.

In fact, I’d expand the definition here to include precincts where at least one Democrat topped 40%, since that is still significantly better than the district as a whole. There are a half-dozen of those precincts:

Pcnt RVs Votes Turnout Brann Brann% Sharp Sharp% Henley Henley% ==================================================================== 298 2332 798 34.22% 263 36.3 297 40.3 286 38.8 312 4148 1367 32.96% 476 38.0 515 40.5 480 37.2 313 2711 794 29.29% 312 42.6 339 46.6 319 42.9 330 2311 564 24.41% 240 47.7 250 49.6 N/A N/A 569 3098 1076 34.73% 416 42.3 460 46.7 454 45.4 572 2969 905 30.48% 374 44.6 400 47.4 381 44.5

These precincts, especially the bottom four, are close enough to the 50% mark that a project to figure out who the desired voters are and then target them makes sense. I should also note that an eyeball comparison with the 2002 numbers in the Lite Guv’s race also indicates that each of those precincts became bluer in 2006. The material is there – it needs extra work, but it’s there. And again, I won’t say we’re maximizing our efforts to win Harris County in 2008 unless we’re giving precincts like these the work they need. More to come, so stay tuned.

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