Precinct analysis: Obama v Obama

So as mentioned before I now have a draft canvass for Harris County. There’s a lot of data to go through, and I’ll probably publish most of what I find after the holiday. One thing I’d like to share for now is a comparison of how President Obama did in the various redrawn districts versus how he was predicted to do based on 2008 results in the precincts that make up these districts. In the table below, reading from left to right, “Romney” and “Obama” give the two-party percentage of each candidate’s vote from 2012, while “McCain” and “Obama” do the same for 2008. Third party votes and undervotes are ignored, this is just a straight up comparison of the ratio of GOP votes to Obama votes.

Dist Romney Obama McCain Obama ======================================== CD02 63.93% 36.07% 62.32% 37.68% CD07 60.87% 39.13% 59.22% 40.78% CD18 23.06% 76.94% 23.02% 76.98% CD29 33.40% 66.60% 37.32% 62.68% SBOE6 60.67% 39.33% 58.88% 41.12% SD06 32.86% 67.14% 36.08% 63.92% SD07 67.64% 32.36% 65.32% 34.68% SD15 40.26% 59.74% 39.68% 60.32% HD126 62.85% 37.15% 62.32% 37.68% HD127 70.07% 29.93% 68.32% 31.68% HD128 73.15% 26.85% 70.42% 29.58% HD129 65.59% 34.41% 62.88% 37.12% HD130 76.92% 23.08% 74.50% 26.50% HD131 15.80% 84.20% 18.00% 82.00% HD132 59.71% 40.29% 60.12% 39.88% HD133 68.58% 31.42% 65.37% 34.63% HD134 57.51% 42.49% 53.02% 46.98% HD135 59.63% 40.37% 61.01% 38.99% HD137 34.75% 65.25% 37.14% 62.86% HD138 60.13% 39.87% 59.82% 40.18% HD139 23.79% 76.21% 24.10% 75.90% HD140 29.26% 70.74% 33.36% 66.64% HD141 12.13% 87.87% 14.40% 85.60% HD142 22.12% 77.88% 21.41% 78.59% HD143 32.18% 67.82% 35.45% 64.55% HD144 48.53% 51.47% 51.56% 48.44% HD145 38.87% 61.13% 42.36% 57.64% HD146 20.26% 79.74% 21.43% 78.57% HD147 20.62% 79.38% 19.07% 80.93% HD148 42.08% 57.92% 41.88% 58.12% HD149 42.28% 57.72% 44.12% 55.88% HD150 69.39% 30.61% 68.09% 31.91%

In case you’re wondering, the 2008 data comes from the FTP directory of the Texas Legislative Council – click on the plan in question (note: C = Congress; E = Education, as in State Board Of; H = House; S = Senate), then Reports, then your preferred format, then finally on the link that has “RED206_2008G_Statewide” in it. The districts I analyzed are ones that are entirely contained within Harris County. There’s no point in comparing, say, the results in SD17 or HD36 to the TLC reports, since these districts run into other counties and thus would render such a comparison moot.

The first thing that should strike you is that the map-drawers knew what they were doing. There’s not a lot of variation between what was predicted based on 2008 results and what actually happened in 2012. Romney generally did a little better than McCain in Republican districts. The exceptions are HDs 132 and 135 where he underperformed by a little, and HD134 where he had his biggest gain over McCain. Obama generally did a little better in the Democratic districts, with his biggest gains in the Latino districts. I have not gotten far enough in the analysis to determine how Obama did compared to other countywide Democrats in these districts – as we know, he lagged behind other Dems in Latino districts in 2008, but what we see here is consistent with what we saw in heavily Latino counties around the state. I’ll come back to this issue later after I’ve filled in more of the blanks.

While I haven’t yet completed filling in the relevant numbers for other candidates on the countywide ballot, I can compare Obama to the relevant Democratic candidate for each of these districts. Here’s how that looks, omitting candidates such as Rep. Gene Green who were not challenged by a Republican:

Dist Candidate Votes Pct ================================= CD02 Daugherty 80,262 33.49% CD02 Obama 88,451 36.07% CD07 Cargas 85,253 37.44% CD07 Obama 92,128 39.13% CD18 Lee 145,893 77.11% CD18 Obama 149,775 76.94% SBOE6 Jensen 207,697 40.58% SBOE6 Obama 215,053 39.33% SD06 Gallegos 93,136 70.94% SD06 Obama 89,584 67.14% SD07 Texas 90,606 31.59% SD07 Obama 93,774 32.36% SD15 Whitmire 135,595 62.34% SD15 Obama 131,838 59.74% HD127 Pogue 19,389 29.77% HD127 Obama 19,660 29.93% HD134 Johnson 36,366 45.66% HD134 Obama 34,561 42.49% HD137 Wu 15,789 65.72% HD137 Obama 15,899 65.25% HD144 Perez 12,425 53.47% HD144 Obama 12,281 51.47% HD149 Vo 25,967 61.12% HD149 Obama 24,770 57.72% HD150 Neal 19,308 30.30% HD150 Obama 19,668 30.61%

It shouldn’t be a surprise to see longtime officials such as Sens. John Whitmire and the late Mario Gallegos overperform. Voters tend to be happier with their own representatives than with whatever legislative body those representatives belong to. I figure good constituent service accounts for a lot of that. In fairness, I note that Republicans Dan Patrick, Ted Poe, and John Culberson also appear to have beaten the spread, something Culberson decidedly did not do in 2006 and 2008.

I noted Traci Jensen’s challenge before the election, and unfortunately she was not able to eat into that 100,000 vote deficit that she faced. I think a 2008 level of turnout on the Democratic side would have added a couple thousand more votes to her total and pushed her into the “overperformer” group. Her two-party percentage was a bit higher than Obama’s despite her lower raw vote number due to larger influence of third party candidates in her race and probably more undervoting on the Republican side. The SBOE, like the Senate, has everyone run in the first post-redistricting election, then they draw lots to see who goes again in two years and who gets to wait for four. I hope the latter is the case for SBOE6, and I hope that 20+ years of unopposed Republicans someone continues Jensen’s work in the next election.

Ann Johnson in HD134 also faced an uphill climb, which turned out to be steeper than we thought. She did do what she needed to do – she collected some 2000 crossover votes in outperforming Obama by three points – it just wasn’t enough. Unlike many legislative districts, HD134 does not get noticeably bluer in presidential years – if anything, based on what we saw from 2006 and 2008, it gets a little redder – so it’s likely the case that 2014 at least won’t be any harder than this year was. It’s all about working to change people’s minds, which may be easier after another legislative session. We’ll see about that. Johnson ran a strong race, the wall was just too high for her. Mary Ann Perez also did very well running in a district that turned out to be a little more friendly than we originally expected. The boost Obama got from Latino voters likely helped, but she went above and beyond that. If the district isn’t redrawn by the San Antonio court, Perez will surely face a strong challenge in 2014, but she’s already proven she can swim against the tide. As for Gene Wu in HD137, there’s nothing I can say that Greg hasn’t already said, so go read him.

I do have data about the County Commissioner precincts, but this post is long enough. I’ll get to that and to other matters in subsequent entries. Let me know what you think about this.

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5 Responses to Precinct analysis: Obama v Obama

  1. PDiddie says:

    Confused about your rounding. In the first spreadsheet it appears you didn’t just ignore 3rd party and undervotes but rounded the numbers up for Ds and Rs so that they would total 100.00.

    Is it accurate then to surmise from this data that those did not account for even one one-hundredth of one percent?

  2. PDiddie – The percentages are simply Obama v Romney and Obama v McCain straight up. It was just easier to do it this way in my calculation of the 2012 numbers, so I did the same thing for the 2008 numbers in order to have an apples-to-apples comparison. I may go back later and redo the 2012 numbers to get their percentage of the total vote rather than the two-party vote, but I doubt it will reveal anything different.

  3. Jay says:

    I’ve been reading your blog via RSS feed for a couple of years now, but the RSS feed is no longer operational. It stopped as of Nov. 11, 2012. I tweeted that info to you a couple of days ago, but got no reply on Twitter. Is it possible to fix the RSS feed? If you could shoot me an email letting me know it’s fixed, I’d appreciate that too so that I can re-subscribe to the feed. Thanks!

  4. Jay,

    My apologies, I don’t get on Twitter much. I can tell you that my RSS feed has not changed. I subscribe to my own RSS feed as a sanity check, and I can verify that all my posts are showing up for me in Google reader. Maybe try unsubscribing and re-subscribing? What feed reader do you use, and what is the feed URL? The one I subscribe to is http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/index.rdf. Please let me know. Thanks, and thanks for reading!

  5. Pingback: January finance reports for area legislative offices – Off the Kuff

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