Runoff precinct analysis: At Large #2

Now for a race that’s both a little easier and a little harder to understand, in At Large #2:

Dist  Robinson   Davis
======================
A        6,193   5,825
B        7,698   7,508
C       18,432   8,938
D        9,941   9,840
E        8,762  11,677
F        3,557   3,233
G       13,439  13,197
H        5,677   3,026
I        4,570   2,919
J        2,773   2,336
K        8,592   6,407
		
A       51.53%  48.47%
B       50.62%  49.38%
C       67.34%  32.66%
D       50.26%  49.74%
E       42.87%  57.13%
F       52.39%  47.61%
G       50.45%  49.55%
H       65.23%  34.77%
I       61.02%  38.98%
J       54.28%  45.72%
K       57.28%  42.72%

CM David Robinson

If there was ever a race in which the vaunted Pincer Strategy should have worked, it was this one. Willie Davis should have had the best of both worlds – increased African-American turnout thanks to Sylvester Turner, and high Republican turnout from Bill King. What more could an African-American anti-HERO candidate ask for? Turns out, he could have asked for some of those voters to actually vote for him. Davis got in the race late, never had more than the one issue, never raised much money, and apparently never drew much support. I guess this is the flipside of the Pincer Strategy: Republicans weren’t particularly invested in a guy who’d only voted in Democratic primaries before now even if he was with them on that one big issue, and African-Americans – who are, you know, mostly Democrats – were perfectly willing to vote for the candidate that was advertising himself as the Democrat and collecting all the Democratic endorsements. Sometimes it’s just that simple.

Anyway. I really was worried about Robinson going into this runoff. He didn’t have that great a November performance, and none of the candidates that failed to make the runoff had supporters that would necessarily transfer to him. And yet they did. I still don’t quite know what to make of these numbers, and I still think that if Willie Davis had run an actual campaign, he could have won. But he didn’t, and he didn’t. And the Council is a better place to have David Robinson back in it.

Related Posts:

• Precinct analysis: At Large #2
• Chron overview of the At Large #2 runoff
• Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #2