The small county effect in the RRC runoff

A reader named Kay sent me a link to this Google spreadsheet, which shows how counties that had more than 10% turnout in the Democratic primary runoff voted in the Railroad Commissioner race. Short answer: Mark Thompson did pretty well there.

Primary Henry votes Henry % Thompson votes Thompson % ================================================ 32,385 37.85 53,183 62.15 Runoff Henry votes Henry % Thompson votes Thompson % ================================================ 24,776 36.68 42,771 63.32

These 22 counties have just over 379,000 registered voters among them – which is to say, about as many as there are in Collin County, a little less than fiver percent of the statewide total – but they accounted for 34% of the runoff turnout, and gave Thompson more than half of his 36,000-vote margin of victory.

I presume a lot of these counties, like Webb, had local runoffs going on that drove the turnout totals. As for why Thompson did well in them, it’s likely as I said before: having collected nearly a million votes in March, he was the name-ID leader, and coasted home on that. How he got to that position will remain a mystery on par with the fate of Jimmy Hoffa, but I think we’ve flogged that horse sufficiently. Anyway, I don’t know how much light this really shines on things, but I love numbers, and these were interesting. Thanks to Kay for pointing them out to me.

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