Longtime UH poli sci professor Richard Murray is doing some new writing, and he did a deep dive last month on now-Sen. Taylor Rehmet’s runoff win in the SD09 special election that I wanted to share. Here’s the key bit:
Sen. Taylor Rehmet
To get a better handle on what happened in the SD9 race, I’ve spent time pouring over the precinct returns and other analyses of who voted. Some of this work is reflected in Table 2 shown on page 6, which summarizes voting patterns across five precinct groupings in the district. These are:
• The 31 precincts in SD9 with voting age populations (VAP) comprised of more than 80% Anglos. These are middle and upper-middle class areas that are very strongly Republican.
• A sample of 20 precincts that are majority Anglo, but less than 80% in VAP.
• A sample of 18 racially and ethnically mixed precincts where there is no dominant voter group.
• The 22 precincts in SD9 that are 80% plus in Hispanic VAP.
• The three voting precincts in SD9 that are majority Black.These precinct data lead me to the following conclusions:
1. SD9 was carefully crafted in 2021 to include very high turnout Anglo-dominated areas, combined with heavily populated Hispanic and mixed Hispanic/Black precincts featuring low levels of voter registration and turnout. The latter support Democratic candidates in General Elections, but contribute relatively few votes to the district totals. Note that the Hancock-approved map included only three Black majority precincts in SD9, and these were just barely above 50% in African American VAP.
2. The claim that Latino voters significantly contributed to Rehmet’s 57.3% vote share is overstated. Hispanic precincts clearly shifted toward the Democrat from 2024 to 2026. Harris’s margin over Trump was 29% (64% – 35%) in heavily Latino precincts; Rehmet’s was 80% (90% – 10%), but Hispanic voters only accounted for about five percent of the total vote in SD9, so they could not account for most of Taylor Rehmet’s margin of victory.
3. The precinct data is less clear for Black voters because of their lack of concentration, but the African American voter shifts were likely smaller. Black voters had high levels of Democratic support in previous elections like the 2024 presidential race so there was less room for improvement. That being the case, Rehmet’s surprising victory mostly reflected the fact that he made large and consistent gains in voter preference across all Anglo-dominated precincts.
4. The precinct-level data cannot directly refute the assertion that Wambsganss lost because Republicans stayed home. However, note that the vast majority of the approximately 570,000 registered voters in SD9 “stayed home.” That is what usually happens in special elections (a rare exception was the 2025 California referendum on redistricting where more votes were cast than in the 2022 General Election). And among the minority who did not stay home on January 31, many more of these voters were in Republican neighborhoods than Democratic precincts. The voting age population turnout in the 80% plus Anglo precincts (which were the most strongly Republican in SD9) was over four times as high as VAP voting percentages in Black and Hispanic areas.
5. Independent analyses of the vote history of the January runoff voters do not show a spike in voters with a Democratic vote history. Rehmet campaigned to win crossover voters. Available evidence strongly suggest he succeeded.
Summing up, Taylor Rehmet won because he made across-the-board gains in a district where at least 85% of the January 2026 voters were Anglos. His gains were most pronounced in the racially and ethnically mixed precincts populated by lower-middle and working class voters who were disproportionately white. Since those voters were the focus of his campaign that should not be surprising. Rehmet did make large percentage gains in the low-turnout Black and Latino areas. That should be a major concern for Republicans around the state because these voters will be a much larger share of the state electorate than was the case in the SD9 January vote.
Good stuff. This was written as early voting for the primary was about to begin, and Dr. Murray pivots from there to the first returns from EV, which we all remember were heavily Democratic, and goes from there. Read the whole thing.
Dr. Murray is the best. So lucky to have had him as an undergrad. He was very generous in giving extensions for our term papers in the Fall of 2000 when Florida happened.
If you can appreciate his decades of service, considering pitching in at this his “Roast & Toast” on April 9th. Info below:
https://www.uh.edu/hobby/murrayroast/