So as we all know, this in an unprecedented election, as there are no city races on the ballot. This has everyone wondering about turnout, because the usual drivers of turnout are a Mayor’s race and/or a big referendum, and we have neither of those. What can we guess from past turnout?
There are two components of interest here, overall turnout in the city and in the districts that have contested races. Those races of interest are in HISD, so my first thought was to look at some past elections to see what we could learn from the ratio of voters in each district to total voters in Houston. If that’s reasonably consistent, then we can make a projection for the districts on the ballot based on what we think the top level is.
HISD Trustee terms are four years, so our points of comparison are the years in which the same districts are up. Here are the citywide numbers from the Harris County Clerk:
Year Turnout
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2001 284,748
2005 189,046
2009 178,777
2013 174,620
Yes, there are city voters outside Harris County, but none of them intersect with HISD, so we can safely ignore them. Now here are the totals for the five HISD districts that are normally on the ballot in these cycles:
Dist 2001 Share 2005 Share 2009 Share 2013 Share
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I 12,515 4.40 10,159 5.37 9,823 5.49 10,521 6.03
V 21,761 7.64 14,550 8.14
VI
VII 12,394 7.10
IX 17,524 6.15 12,372 6.54 12,299 6.88 11,245 6.44
And right here you can see why I called this an “unsatisfying” attempt at this projection. The County Clerk only shows the results for contested school board races, and Districts V, VI, and VII haven’t had a lot of those in recent years. We do have good data in I and IX, and those numbers are interesting. District IX is very consistent. If you know what overall city turnout was, you can make a pretty good guess as to turnout in IX. District I, on the other hand, shows a steady upward trend. I’d say that’s the result of changes in the district, which encompasses a good chunk of the Heights and surrounding areas that have been gentrifying. As such, I’d consider the 2013 numbers to be a floor for this year.
That leaves us with the question of what citywide turnout might be. We do have a model for guessing turnout in elections with no Mayor’s race. Since 2005, there have been six At Large City Council runoffs with no corresponding Mayor’s runoff, and in 2007 there was a special May election with June runoff for At Large #3. Here are the vote totals in those races:
2005 At Large #2 runoff = 35,922
2007 At Large #3 May = 33,853
2007 At Large #3 June = 24,746
2007 At Large #5 runoff = 23,548
2011 At Large #2 runoff = 51,239
2011 At Large #5 runoff = 55,511
2013 At Large #2 runoff = 32,930
2013 At Large #3 runoff = 33,824
Those numbers are pretty consistent with my earlier finding that there are about 36,000 people who voted in every city election from 2003 to 2013. There won’t be a Mayor’s race this year, but the school board candidates are out there campaigning, and I expect they’ll draw a few people to the polls who aren’t in that group. Similarly, there will be a campaign for the bond issues on the ballot, and that should nudge things up a bit as well. I think a reasonable, perhaps slightly optimistic but not outrageous, estimate is about 50,000 votes total. If that’s the case, then my projections for the school board races are as follows:
District I = 3,000 (6% of the total)
District V = 4,000 (8%)
District VII = 3,500 (7%)
District IX = 3,250 (6.5%)
You can adjust up or down based on your opinion of the 50K overall estimate. If these numbers represent the over/under line, I’d be inclined to put a few bucks on the over in each, just because there will be actual campaign activity in them and there won’t be elsewhere. I don’t think that will be a big difference-maker, but it ought to mean a little something. All of this is about as scientific as a SurveyMonkey poll, but it’s a starting point. I’ll be sure to follow up after the election, because we may want to do this again in four years’ time, when the next Mayor-free election could be.
I believe that you estimates may be close, I looked at HISD District 1 only and based on people that almost always come out to vote the total should be close to 2,700.
This movie gets scarier when you consider the number of candidates competing in each district. So we have 3 candidates chasing an estimated 3000 votes in District 1.
We have 3 candidates chasing an estimated 3250 votes in District 9.
Now factor in money including outside money/resources into this very low turnout projection. Could our next five (actually six) new HISD board members receive their “Mandate from Heaven” to govern from 3% of the voters? Now consider a December run off election with an even lower voter turnout. I am scared, really scared. TEA Morath might point this out to us later. Thanks for the analysis.