Election live results are here. As of the 11 PM update, in which 118 of 151 voting centers had reported, Molly Cook was easily winning the SD15 special election, with about 56% of the vote. In the HCAD elections:
Position 1: Kathy Blueford-Daniels had 55% after early voting, but Bill Frazer was catching up thanks to his Election Day performance. As of 11 PM, Blueford-Daniels was still winning outright with just under 51%, but if things continued as they had been she would likely end up in a runoff. It’s hard to say where exactly this race was because we don’t know which centers had returned results and which were still out. I’ll update in the morning.
Position 2: Kyle Scott (46%) and Melissa Noriega (25%) appear headed to the runoff. Scott was over 50% on Election Day but I don’t think there are enough votes out to push him to a majority.
Position 3: Ericka McCrutcheon (41%) is in the runoff, but it’s hard to say whether she’ll face Amy Lacy or Pelumi Adeleke. Lacy was slightly ahead of Adeleke after early voting, but Adeleke pulled ahead in the last update. Of interest is that Blueford-Daniels had a big lead in mail ballots, Noriega and Scott were basically tied in mail ballots, but Adeleke was well behind McCrutcheon and Lacy in mail ballots. She was ahead of Lacy in both early in person and Election Day votes, however, and that may be enough for her to make it to the runoff.
I saw somewhere that the Clerk announced that something like 21,500 votes were cast on Saturday. As of the 11 PM update, there were just under 18K votes counted. So that’s where we are. This would put final turnout at around 53K votes, just barely over two percent of registered voters.
I will update in the morning. Good night.
UPDATE: And as of the morning, the results are the same. Kathy Blueford-Daniels remained above fifty percent and was the outright winner in Position 1. Pelumi Adeleke held on to second place in Position 3 and will be in the runoff. Melissa Noriega will be in the runoff for Position 2.
Here’s the Chron story about SD15 and the story about HCAD. The runoff elections for HCAD will be on Saturday, June 15. Light a candle for all the election workers out there, who will be handling the primary runoffs on May 28 as well.
Is there a good way of estimating what percentage of the votes cast in SD 15 were from Repulicans voters…or voters unlikely to vote on May 28?
I was curious how much predictive value there’d be in this election for the more important one.
The analog that comes to mind was HD 148, where Anna Eastman won the special election to complete Jessica Farrar’s term, but Penny “Morales” Shaw won the Democratic primary. That was quite different as there were 15(!) candidates in the Special General Election (held with other races on Nov 5, 2019 with over 20k votes). Eastman had 20.3% of the votes while Shaw came 6th with 8.0%.
In the more important Dem Primary in March 2020, Eastman came first 41.6% to 22.1%. However, that was, presumably, due largely because the Latino vote was split among Shaw, Adrian P. “Not that Adrian” Garcia, and Cynthia Reyes-Revilla. Shaw won the runoff by 2.4%.
I’m sure there are better examples. I voted in that one, which is why I remember it.
It seems likely that Republican voters might be more likely to have voted for Cook than Johnson. She’s white and has a more white-looking name Johnson. SD 15 doesn’t have a lot of Republican voters and I don’t know how many non-Democratic primary SD 15 voters voted in this election.
Just over 11% of ballots were undervotes for SD 15. There are more Republicans in SD 15 than that, so there were a significant number of votes from voters who voted in the SD 15 sepecial election who won’t vote in the Democratic primary runoff.
In summary, I suspect that there isn’t much predictive value in this SD 15 election for what will happen on May 28. It doesn’t seem worthwhile trying to dive down into precinct data to improve accuracy.
Low turnout elections basically mean wealthy, educated whites decide who wins , hence why Molly Cook did so well.
Would imagine late May runoffs are closer but can’t see enough of Johnson’s electorate coming out to put him over the top
Ken Roberts, the Republicans I know preferred Johnson in the SD 15 special election because Cook is viewed as much more left-leaning. I would wager that 40 to 45% of the electorate in SD 15 is Republican.
Mainstream, with all due respect, I think you are overestimating the GOP strength in SD15. Beto got 65% of the vote there in 2022. I would bet the over on Dem performance there this November.