Precinct review: CD07

Since my examination of the Richmond Rail effect generated a lot of good feedback, I'm going to start my tour of the Harris County precinct data with a look at CD07 and the race between John Culberson and Jim Henley. First, a couple of preliminary comments.

As I said yesterday, I'm going to try to provide a range of data for each district that I examine, so that a given candidate's performance can be evaluated in the context of how everyone else did among the same group of voters. There are nine statewide races (not counting the Governor's race, which is generally not comparable for obvious reasons) and 18 countywide contests, and at the macro level the spread is roughly nine points for the statewides and seven points for the countywides, so there's a lot of information to be gleaned. In all cases, I'm doing a straight up R-versus-D comparison, so don't be alarmed if some of the percentages look odd. I'll give both vote totals and vote percentages, so it should be apparent when undervotes are a factor as well.

With all that out of the way, let's dive into the data. First, here's how Henley stacked up against his fellow Democrats in the district:

Candidate     Votes    Pct

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

Sharp        66,157  41.52

R. Garcia    65,001  40.09

Henley       64,412  39.36

Moody        64,384  40.85

Green        63,788  40.34

County Avg   60,934  38.50

State Avg    57,580  35.99

Pierre       56,086  34.69

Van Os       54,004  33.16

Henley had the third highest vote total, trailing only Jim Sharp (whose name you're going to see a lot in these discussions) and Richard Garcia. He was ninth best in percentage, as four other countywide candidates (Silverman, Connelly, Voigt, and Burks) scored higher than his 39.36%, but as none of them topped 63,000 votes, this was as much a function of Republican dropoffs as anything else. He exceeded the average statewide performance by 3.37 points, and the average countywides by 0.86. He did significantly better than the lowest performers at the state and county levels.

Now let's look at Culberson:

Candidate     Votes    Pct

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

Abbott      108,877  66.84

Kaufman     105,613  65.31

Bacarisse   101,854  63.88

State Avg   102,408  64.01

Culberson    99,236  60.64

County Avg   97,347  61.50

Willet       93,213  59.15

Alcala       93,164  58.48

Of the nine statewide Republicans, Culberson received fewer votes than all but Don Willet. He topped all of the countywides except for Beverly Kaufman and Charles Bacarisse, placing him eleventh overall. He was ninth from the bottom in percentage, again being affected by the higher rate of undervotes downballot. It seems clear to me that Henley was able to get some traction against him, and thus close the 31-point gap that Culberson enjoyed in 2004 to nineteen points this year (here I'm comparing the actual results, not the two-party totals).

Of course, nineteen points is still a pretty comfortable margin by any reasonable standard, so the question is how much potential is there to narrow this difference further. To attempt to answer that, we have to look at CD07 in two pieces, which I think shows both the strength and the limitations of Henley's campaign. Let's compare Henley's performance inside HD134, which is most of the inner Loop portion of CD07 and where Henley's campaign was easily the most visible, and outside HD134. First, inside HD134:

Candidate     Votes    Pct

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

Cohen        24,763  55.67

Henley       22,795  52.06

R. Garcia    21,725  50.68

Sharp        21,653  51.51

Moody        21,455  51.62

Green        21,066  50.69

Burks        20,702  50.18

County Avg   20,084  48.33

State Avg    19,930  45.81

Van Os       18,450  42.64

Pierre       18,394  43.13

Henley was clearly very strong here, running behind only Ellen Cohen, who was practically superhuman. Anyone who spent any time in HD134 could see with their own eyes the huge number of Henley signs in people's yards. Here's how it looks from the Republican perspective:

Candidate     Votes    Pct

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

Abbott       24,818  57.36

Kaufman      24,250  56.87

State Avg    22,935  54.19

County Avg   21,473  51.67

Culberson    20,993  47.94

Schneider    20,967  50.72

Wolfe        20,552  49.82

Galik        20,490  49.31

Alcala       20,382  48.49

Willet       20,109  48.38

Wong         19,718  44.33

Culberson received the seventh-lowest vote total, and was one of only seven Republicans (the six listed plus Orlando Sanchez) to not get a majority in HD134. It's clear who this part of the district preferred.

Problem is, of course, that HD134 represents only about a quarter of CD07, and if Henley overperformed there he must not have done quite as well elsewhere. Here are the numbers:

Candidate     Votes    Pct

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

Sharp        44,504  37.94

Moody        42,929  37.00

Henley       41,617  34.72

County Avg   40,850  35.00

State Avg    38,190  32.46

Pierre       37,692  31.66

Van Os       35,554  29.72

Here, Henley is much more middle of the pack, at least compared to the countywide candidates, where a total of seven of them surpassed his vote total. I believe this is consistent with the level of visibility his campaign had outside the Loop. For the GOP:

Candidate     Votes    Pct

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

Abbott       84,059  70.28

Kaufman      81,363  68.34

State Avg    79,473  67.54

Culberson    78,243  65.28

County Avg   75,874  65.00

Willet       73,104  63.00

Alcala       72,782  62.06

Now Culberson is above average overall, beating all the countywides except Kaufman and Bacarisse (78,800 votes) and four of the statewides (he finished just behind Sharon Keller's 78,280 votes, but there was no Libertarian candidate in that race, which gave her a boost). This is his turf, and without a serious erosion in his support outside HD134, his re-election prospects will continue to be bright.

The best case scenario for the Dems does offer some hope. Combining the best performances in each section of CD07 (Cohen plus Sharp) and pitting it against the corresponding Republicans (Wong and Alcala) gives a 23,233 voe deficit (69,267 to 92,500), or a 57.2-42.8 spread, which is certainly within reason. Even under these assumptions, however, there were more Republican votes in the non-HD134 portion of the district than there were Democratic votes overall. The bottom line is that any Democrat who wants to knock off John Culberson will need to be able to run close to even in the western portion of CD07. I have no idea who such a person might be, nor is there enough evidence to suggest what the Democratic ceiling is out there. All I know for sure is that this is the obstacle.

That's a lot to digest. I'll have more reports (hopefully more concise ones as well) in the coming days.

UPDATE: In rereading this, I don't think I've fully conveyed my appreciation of Jim Henley for accomplishing what he did with relatively little money but a lot of volunteer energy. Henley clearly gained ground for the Dems in this district. He proved that there is a payoff to running an active campaign against Culberson. It's up to whoever runs in 2008 to build on what he did.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on November 28, 2006 to Election 2006 | TrackBack