Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial
Other jurisdictions
Appellate courts, Part 1
Appellate courts, Part 2
Judicial averages
Other cities
District Attorney
County Attorney
Sheriff
Tax Assessor
County Clerk
HCDE
Fort Bend, part 1
Fort Bend, part 2
Fort Bend, part 3
Brazoria County
Harris County State Senate comparisons
State Senate districts 2020
State Senate district comparisons
State House districts 2020, part 1
State House districts 2020, part 2
Median districts
I return once again to doing cycle-over-cycle comparisons in vote turnout, in this case for State House districts. There are a lot of them, and I’m not going to do them all but I am going to do enough of them that I will split this into two parts. Part One, this post, will group districts by demographic groups. Part Two, to come later, will be to group them by counties of interest.
First up, just to ease ourselves in, are the four big urban districts that are Anglo, wealthy, highly college-educated, and swung hard towards the Democrats since 2012:
Dist 12-16R 12-16D 16-20R 16-20D 12-20R 12-20D Dem net
============================================================
134 -10,943 15,312 6,540 17,771 -4,403 33,083 37,486
047 -2,005 14,218 13,145 27,678 11,140 41,896 30,756
108 -5,942 12,553 8,628 17,929 2,686 30,482 27,796
121 -4,020 6,534 6,059 15,078 2,039 21,612 19,573
As discussed before, the columns represent the difference in vote total for the given period and party, so “1216” means 2012 to 2016, “1620” means 2016 to 2020, and “1220” means 2012 to 2020. Each column has a D or an R in it, so “1216R” means the difference between 2016 Donald Trump and 2012 Mitt Romney for the Presidential table, and so forth. In each case, I subtract the earlier year’s total from the later year’s total, so the “-9,951” for SD114 in the “1216R” column means that Donald Trump got 9,951 fewer votes in 2016 in SD14 than Mitt Romney got, and the “56,887” for SD14 in the “1216D” column means that Hillary Clinton got 56,887 more votes than Barack Obama got. “Dem net” at the end just subtracts the “1220R” total from the “1220D” total, which is the total number of votes that Biden netted over Obama. Got it? Good.
Despite the large swings, only the top two are now Dem-held. HD108 managed to remain in the hands of Rep. Morgan Meyer despite being carried by statewide Dems all the way down the ballot, while HD121 still remains somewhat Republican-leaning. I don’t know what magic Republicans have in mind for redistricting, but their hold on these voters is slipping away rapidly. I can’t emphasize enough that Mitt Romney got 60% of the vote in HD134 in 2012, and look at where it is now.
I’ve written plenty about these districts, and I could have included more of them in this table. Most of those you will see later. There’s not much to add except to say that this particular demographic shift has been a huge driver in the overall blue-ing of Texas, and especially of its most populated areas. I don’t know what the future holds, but I don’t see that changing in the near term.
When I mentioned that this post was a look at the districts by demographic groups, I assume your first thought was that I’d take a closer look at Latino districts. Well, here you go:
Dist 12-16R 12-16D 16-20R 16-20D 12-20R 12-20D Dem net
============================================================
051 425 10,783 4,422 19,073 4,847 29,856 25,009
102 -4,430 5,333 2,511 10,832 -1,919 16,165 18,084
148 -1,481 8,555 5,598 10,113 4,117 18,668 14,551
107 -3,023 4,566 718 7,532 -2,305 12,098 14,403
103 -96 7,314 3,535 10,357 3,439 17,671 14,232
116 -583 6,014 3,546 10,281 2,963 16,295 13,332
117 4,532 8,828 14,927 22,921 19,459 31,749 12,290
105 -2,249 4,377 2,900 8,547 651 12,924 12,273
078 -1,129 6,723 6,731 9,618 5,602 16,341 10,739
124 330 5,077 5,877 11,756 6,207 16,833 10,626
125 -1,081 4,378 4,753 9,350 3,672 13,728 10,056
079 -453 7,038 4,976 6,495 4,523 13,533 9,010
075 1,734 11,011 9,747 8,599 11,481 19,610 8,129
104 -777 3,881 2,743 6,042 1,966 9,923 7,957
077 -1,530 5,080 3,539 3,936 2,009 9,016 7,007
119 1,062 3,428 6,041 10,507 7,103 13,935 6,832
145 -1,306 5,575 5,291 5,038 3,985 10,613 6,628
090 -180 2,391 3,170 5,496 2,990 7,887 4,897
118 1,391 3,719 6,633 7,790 8,024 11,509 3,485
076 -260 5,039 3,826 1,635 3,566 6,674 3,108
140 -733 4,433 4,140 1,810 3,407 6,243 2,836
144 -1,051 3,577 4,044 1,480 2,993 5,057 2,064
041 1,664 6,820 8,617 5,201 10,281 12,021 1,740
143 -1,038 3,244 4,483 1,446 3,445 4,690 1,245
022 -1,261 -2,280 1,510 2,254 249 -26 -275
034 620 799 6,012 3,759 6,632 4,558 -2,074
038 1,533 4,706 9,344 2,945 10,877 7,651 -3,226
040 2,384 3,753 8,981 3,433 11,365 7,186 -4,179
037 969 3,764 7,324 36 8,293 3,800 -4,493
036 1,482 5,527 9,847 -480 11,329 5,047 -6,282
039 2,071 3,256 8,411 836 10,482 4,092 -6,390
035 2,007 2,358 8,961 2,163 10,968 4,521 -6,447
042 882 2,195 7,908 -323 8,790 1,872 -6,918
043 2,532 162 8,001 1,059 10,533 1,221 -9,312
080 1,959 1,789 9,567 127 11,526 1,916 -9,610
074 1,127 2,708 9,454 -2,185 10,581 523 -10,058
031 3,017 -1,816 13,479 -412 16,496 -2,228 -18,724
A couple of notes here. Defining “Latino district” is subjective, and I make no claim that my way is optimal. What you see above is almost all of the districts that are represented by a Latino member, plus HD80, which despite being majority Latino is still represented by Democrat Tracy King. I skipped HDs 49 (Gina Hinojosa) and 50 (Celia Israel) because the’re much more Anglo than Latino. HDs 102, 105, and 107 were held by non-Latino Republicans before being flipped by Democrats in 2016 and 2018. HD43 is held by the one Latino Republican in the House, JM Lozano, who won originally as a Democrat in 2008 and then changed parties after the 2010 election. HDs 79 and 90 were held by Anglo Democrats in 2012; Lon Burnam was primaried out by Rep. Ramon Romero in 2014, and Joe Pickett resigned following the 2018 election due to health challenges.
There’s a lot of data here, and I’ll try to keep this manageable. All the districts that showed a net gain for Dems over both elections are in Bexar, Dallas, El Paso, Harris, Travis (HD51), and Tarrant (HD90), plus HD41 in Hidalgo County. In Bexar, Dallas, and Tarrant, there were net gains in each cycle. In El Paso, there were big gains in 2016 and more modest gains in 2020, with the exception of HD75, which had a slight gain for Republicans in 2020. HD75 is the easternmost and thus most rural of the El Paso districts. It also still voted 66.5% to 31.9% for Biden in 2020, just for some perspective.
In Harris, all five districts gained in 2016, but only HD148 also gained in 2020. HD145 came close to breaking even, while HDs 140, 143, and 144 all moved towards Republicans; we saw this when we looked at the Harris County Senate districts and talked about SD06. This is the first of several places where I will shrug my shoulders and say “we’ll see what happens in 2022”. Honestly, I don’t know what to expect. We’ve discussed this topic numerous times, and as there are forces moving urban and college-educated voters towards Democrats, the same forces are moving rural and non-college voters towards Republicans. The biggest of those forces is Donald Trump, whose presence on the ballot helped Republicans in 2016 and 2020 but whose absence hurt them in 2018. We just don’t know yet what 2022 will bring.
Of the districts that had net Republican gains, HD22 is in Jefferson County (basically, it’s Beaumont; Dade Phelan’s HD21 has the rest of JeffCo plus Orange County) and HD34 is in Nueces County. Jefferson County has been slowly losing population over time, and I think that was a big driver of what happened with HD22. It’s also much more Black than Latino, and thus maybe is a better fit with the next data set, but it has long been represented by Rep. Joe Deshtotel, and this is the decision I made. Nueces County also has the Republican-held HD32 in it, and it showed a net Democratic gain of 1,576 votes over the two cycles, with most of that in 2016 but still a small Dem net in 2020. Its Latino voting age population is about 46%, nearly identical to its Anglo VAP. HD34 was one of the tighter districts even before 2020, and I figure it’s on the target list for Republicans in redistricting.
Most of the other districts are in Cameron, Hidalgo, and Webb counties, and while 2020 was a better year for Republicans in all of them, I don’t think that will necessarily be the case in 2022, a belief driven in part by the incumbency theory and in part by my own wishfulness. That said, as noted before the shifts were more muted downballot, with Trump outperforming other Republicans in those districts. I had my doubts about the durability of Democratic gains in 2016 because of the disparity between the Hillary numbers and the rest of the numbers, and I think it’s fair to have those same doubts here. We do know how it went in 2018, but as before Trump is not on the ballot in 2022. Which force is stronger? Have the underlying conditions changed? I don’t know and neither does anyone else at this time.
HDs 31, 74, and 80 are all cobbled out of smaller counties, and I have much less hope for them, but who knows what the combined effects of the freeze and the Abbott Wall will have. The main thing I took away from analyzing this data is that there was already a Republican shift in 31 and 74 in 2016 with a near miss in 80, though they all rebounded in a Democratic direction in 2018. How much of this was caused by new voters, and how much by swapping allegiances, those are big questions to ponder.
Let’s move on. These are the predominantly Black districts:
Dist 12-16R 12-16D 16-20R 16-20D 12-20R 12-20D Dem net
============================================================
046 -331 7,462 4,363 20,080 4,032 27,542 23,510
027 -461 4,708 6,324 13,724 5,863 18,432 12,569
147 -1,282 3,575 4,571 9,831 3,289 13,406 10,117
109 -914 -500 1,853 11,161 939 10,661 9,722
111 -1,449 -1,155 1,627 8,981 178 7,826 7,648
120 -184 863 4,503 10,856 4,319 11,719 7,400
100 -840 -537 2,107 7,799 1,267 7,262 5,995
142 294 2,093 4,685 8,804 4,979 10,897 5,918
131 -642 2,681 4,289 6,642 3,647 9,323 5,676
146 -1,653 -923 2,438 6,798 785 5,875 5,090
139 -1,290 1,216 4,826 6,786 3,536 8,002 4,466
095 -613 -2,745 2,727 7,752 2,114 5,007 2,893
141 218 -721 2,594 4,405 2,812 3,684 872
110 -101 -3,010 1,820 3,362 1,719 352 -1,367
HD27 is in Fort Bend, HD46 is in Travis (it’s also much more Latino than Black but has long been represented by a Black legislator, with Dawnna Dukes preceding Sheryl Cole; it is the inverse of HD22 in that way), HD95 is in Tarrant, and HD120 is in Bexar. HD101 in Tarrant County has a higher Black percentage of its population than either HDs 46 or 120, but it’s held by the Anglo Dem Chris Turner, so I skipped it. All the rest are in Harris and Dallas. The range of outcomes here is fascinating. I think what we see in the 2016 results, at least in some of these districts, is a bit of a letdown in enthusiasm from Obama to Clinton, with perhaps a bit of the campaign to dampen turnout among Black Democrats finding some success. Some districts in Harris County like HD141 have had pretty modest growth in population and voter registration as well. I don’t know what the story may have been in HD110, but if one of my Dallas readers would like to offer a few words, I’d be interested in hearing them.
There was some evidence around the country of Trump making modest gains with Black voters, mostly Black men, in 2020. I do see a case for that here, because even as Dems had net gains in 2020 – significant gains, in some of these districts – their share of the total new turnout is smaller than you’d otherwise expect. For example, HD131 voted 80.6% to 18.5% for Biden, but only 60.8% of the extra voters in 2020 voted for Biden. HD131 had voted 84.1% to 13.3% for Hillary in 2016, meaning that Trump cut almost ten points off of his deficit from 2016. This is your reminder that a shift in vote share towards one party is not the same as a shift in total votes towards one party. We’ve had this conversation about Democrats making percentage point gains in some heavily Republican areas while still falling farther behind, and this is that same conversation from the other side.
Finally, here are the four districts represented by Asian American legislators:
Dist 12-16R 12-16D 16-20R 16-20D 12-20R 12-20D Dem net
============================================================
026 -4,573 9,082 7,327 13,556 2,754 22,638 19,884
112 -2,140 4,427 5,086 10,634 2,946 15,061 12,115
137 -848 2,147 2,435 4,099 1,587 6,246 4,659
149 -2,592 3,504 8,134 4,645 5,542 8,149 2,607
This grouping is even more tenuous than the Latino districts, mostly because there’s no such thing as a plurality Asian district. Indeed, only HDs 26 and 149, which are the two most Asian districts in the state, are in the top five; HDs 66, 28, and 67 are the next three in line. They will all be covered in the next post in this series. HD137 is mostly Latino and HD112 is mostly Anglo. Like I said, these are the decisions I made. HD26 is in Fort Bend and was won in 2020 by Republican Jacey Jetton, after years of being held by Rick Miller. It was carried by Biden in 2020 and as you can see it has moved pretty heavily Democratic, but it was still Republican enough to be held by them in an open seat race. HD112 is in Dallas and is held by Angie Chen Button, and like HD108 it was otherwise Democratic in 2020. Good luck with redistricting, that’s all I can say. The other two are in Harris County, with HD137 being held by Gene Wu since 2012. It was 63-34 for Obama in 2012 and 67-31 for Biden in 2020. The most curious case for me is HD149, which as you can see followed a pattern similar to the Latino districts in Harris County; I noted this before when I did the Harris County numbers way back when. I’m not quite sure what to make of those totals, but they don’t keep me awake at night. As with the rest, we’ll see what 2022 has in store for us.
Next time, a closer look at some counties of interest. Let me know what you think.
Nice analysis. HD108 is a tough nut to crack obviously. The park cities is just a different world from other affluent urban Dallas areas such as Lakewood or Preston Hollow or parts of Lake Highlands. The north central expressway was the political demarc point in that district. Meyer held his base and did better in some of the newer downtown housing complexes than in 2018, and shaved enough of the D margins in the east. Downballot Dems did win in the 108th but I think some of that was because there are a ton of lawyers in this district and Meyer may have been one of the only Rs they voted for. I think the news of adjacent rep John Turner D-Dallas retiring in HD114 will only help Meyer in 2022.
Pingback: Texas blog roundup for the week of July 5 – Off the Kuff