The Texas Legislative Council now has full data from the 2016 elections on its site, so this seemed like as good a time as any to take a look at the data from Congressional districts. I’m much more limited in what I can do when I have to rely on precinct data from counties because most of Texas’ Congressional districts span multiple counties. But now statewide data is available, so here we go. I’m just going to look at districts where the Presidential numbers were interesting.
Dist Clinton Trump Obama Romney
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02 42.8% 52.0% 35.6% 62.9%
03 39.9% 53.8% 34.1% 64.2%
06 41.6% 53.8% 40.7% 57.9%
07 48.2% 46.8% 38.6% 59.9%
10 42.8% 51.9% 38.8% 59.1%
21 42.1% 51.9% 37.9% 59.8%
22 43.9% 51.7% 36.7% 62.1%
23 49.4% 45.9% 48.0% 50.7%
24 44.3% 50.5% 38.0% 60.4%
31 40.1% 52.6% 38.1% 59.4%
32 48.4% 46.6% 41.5% 57.0%
Some of this we’ve covered before – CDs 07, 23, and 32 are well-known and are on the national radar for next year. CD03 will be open following the retirement of Rep. Sam Johnson. CDs 24, which is mostly in Dallas County, and 22, which is of course Tom DeLay’s old district, deserve a bit more attention and would fall into the next tier below the top three, with CDs 02 and 10 right behind them. And as a matter of personal pleading, I’d really really love to see strong challenges to Lamar Smith in CD21 and Smokey Joe Barton in CD06, two of the worst anti-science and pro-pollution members of Congress.
Now as we know, the Presidential numbers only tell us so much. So as I have done before, here’s a look at the Court of Criminal Appeals races in these districts – just the one in each year that had three candidates, for apples-to-apples purposes – and for this chart I’m going to chow number of votes, to give a feel for how big the gap that needs to be closed is.
Dist Burns Keasler Hampton Keller D Gain
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02 106,167 157,226 84,547 149,242 13,636
03 109,738 187,916 84,352 163,247 717
06 108,272 151,766 98,393 139,344 -2,043
07 107,250 136,246 88,992 134,699 16,711
10 122,499 172,155 100,660 149,355 -961
21 133,428 198,190 110,841 177,330 1,827
22 123,063 171,694 89,624 152,471 14,216
23 105,145 106,067 86,991 92,805 4,892
24 107,986 152,545 87,300 143,217 11,424
31 104,601 159,173 85,689 134,433 -5,828
32 113,659 146,526 99,453 136,691 4,371
A bit more daunting when looked at this way, isn’t it? The “D Gain” column is the net change in the difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates’ vote totals each year. In 2012 in CD02, Sharon Keller beat Keith Hampton by 64,695 votes, but in 2016 Mike Keasler beat Robert Burns by “only” 51,059 votes, for a net Democratic gain of 13,636. This is intended to give a rough guide to what the partisan shift in each district was, and as you can see it was much bigger in some than in others, with there being a net loss in CDs 06, 10, and 31. I have to pause for a moment here to tip my cap to Rep. Will Hurd in CD23, who held his seat in a much less Republican-friendly environment that elected Pete Gallego in 2012. No one in CD23 will ever have an easy election, and 2018 may well be more challenging for Hurd than 2016 was, my point here is simply to say that we should not underestimate this guy. He’s already shown he can win in adverse conditions.
Still, sufficient Democratic turnout could swamp Hurd’s boat, as has happened to other strong candidates of both parties in the past. (A less-Republican redrawn map could also do him in.) The Keasler/Burns numbers suggest that the other two on-the-radar districts (CDs 07 and 32) are also good targets for concentrated turnout efforts. In all cases, though, I believe a key component to any winning strategy will be to make a vote for Congress as much about “sending a message” to an unpopular and incompetent President as anything else. The more Rs you can flip, and the more who decide to stay home, the lower your turnout-boost goals need to be. I don’t know what the conditions will be like in a year and a half, but I do know that energy spent between now and then in these districts to register new voters (and re-register those who have fallen off the rolls) will be energy well utilized.
I will close by noting that there is in fact a candidate for CD21 at this time, Derrick Crowe, who has a pretty good looking background for a first-time candidate. We’ll see how he does in fundraising and other metrics, but for those of you in the district or who are looking for someone to support against the odious Lamar Smith, check him out. It’s never too early to get off to a good start.
