The Trib looks at some numbers.
Rep. Beto O’Rourke
Mike Collier, the Democrat who ran for and lost the race for lieutenant governor last month, wasn’t the star of his party’s ticket. But by some measures, Collier did better in this year’s general election than Beto O’Rourke.
In 171 of the state’s 254 counties — counties O’Rourke famously visited during the campaign — Collier got more votes than the Democrat at the top of the ticket.
In terms of wins and losses, it wasn’t enough of a difference to make a difference: Texas Republicans won all of the statewide races. With this year’s victories, they’ve now done that a dozen times in a row, starting in 1996.
But the Democrats lost by smaller margins than usual. The state didn’t turn blue, as some of their most exuberant partisans had hoped, but it edged toward the purple territory that marks a swing state. Texas hasn’t had margins like this at the top of the ballot since 1998 — 20 years ago.
Overall, O’Rourke got more votes than Collier (or any other statewide Democrat) — more than 4 million of them in the general election. Justin Nelson, the party’s candidate for attorney general, got 3.9 million — coming in with 147,534 fewer votes than O’Rourke. Collier and Kim Olson, who ran for agriculture commissioner, weren’t far behind him.
O’Rourke beat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, his Republican opponent, in 32 counties; by that measure, he outdid his Democratic ticket-mates. Nelson won in 31 counties, Olson in 30, Collier in 29 and so on. Lupe Valdez, the party’s candidate for governor, won in just 20 counties, the least of any of the statewide non-judicial candidates.
I remain fascinated by the fascination with the smaller counties, where a tiny fraction of the vote comes from in Texas. I mean, every vote counts, but you don’t get bonus points for winning a particular county. (Anyone remember the old Continental Basketball Association, where teams could win a point in the standings for outscoring their opponent in a single quarter? Politics isn’t like that.) Because the story doesn’t provide any more context about this Collier-versus-Beto comparison, I put together a spreadsheet that did the dirty work for me. Here are the top 21 counties in which Mike Collier got more votes than Beto O’Rourke:
County C - B P - C Tot Vot
================================
BOWIE 584 -975 59,618
ANGELINA 567 -1,041 51,751
UPSHUR 526 -749 27,708
PANOLA 445 -575 16,392
GREGG 438 -944 69,893
TOM GREEN 437 -1,305 66,826
CASS 416 -450 20,119
LAMAR 403 -612 31,591
VAN ZANDT 396 -633 36,982
RUSK 334 -647 31,242
HARRISON 327 -636 44,462
HOCKLEY 281 -428 13,582
CARSON 264 -364 4,263
HUTCHINSON 247 -398 13,547
CHEROKEE 243 -327 27,949
FREESTONE 236 -351 11,978
HOPKINS 235 -392 22,706
LIMESTONE 235 -365 13,621
WOOD 234 -262 30,065
GRAY 231 -304 12,493
RANDALL 221 -1,304 87,827
The column “C – B” represents the difference between Mike Collier’s vote total and Beto O’Rourke’s vote total in the given county. The “P – C” column is the same thing for Dan Patrick and Ted Cruz. In every single one of these 171 counties, the Patrick-Cruz difference was bigger than the Collier-Beto difference. In other words, everywhere that Mike Collier picked up more votes than Beto, Dan Patrick had even fewer votes than Ted Cruz.
Before we talk about what that might mean, let me mention the last column in the table above. It represents the total number of registered voters in that county. I went to 21 on this list so I could include Randall County, which is easily the largest of the counties among the 171. Not surprisingly in the least, all of this occurred in the smaller counties. To put it in a bit of perspective, Collier garnered an extra 19,837 votes over Beto in these 171 counties combined. In Travis (21,534), Bexar (22,260), Harris (24,487), and Dallas (26,822), Beto’s vote total exceeded Collier’s by more than that. Like I said, there’s no bonus for winning a county.
So why did Collier do better in these places than Beto, despite Beto’s omnipresent campaign? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but Ted Cruz also campaigned, and I’m betting he ran more ads and had more of a (borrowed from Greg Abbott) field game out in the rural areas than Dan Patrick did. While many Republicans in urban and suburban counties abandoned Cruz with vigor, their country cousins may have been less willing to put the Senate in play for the Democrats. Maybe in these parts of the state, it was Dan Patrick who was the least-liked Republican on the ballot. Justin Nelson also outperformed Beto in a bunch of counties, but he did so in 149 of them, and the difference was as much as 100 votes in only two of them, Van Zandt and Hopkins. It’s worth thinking about these things, but it’s the sort of task you should give to a summer intern, not a senior analyst. It’s interesting, but in the end it’s not that big a deal.
My gut is that in small counties where public education is a priority, and residents have few charter and private school alternatives, there are some Republican public schoolteachers and parents voting for Cruz and Collier. Patrick sent mailers claiming he was a strong supporter of public education, but I am not sure that was credible within public education circles.
My gut is that in small counties where public education is a priority, and residents have few charter and private school alternatives, there are some Republican public schoolteachers and parents voting for Cruz and Collier. Patrick sent mailers claiming he was a strong supporter of public education, but I am not sure that was credible within public education circles.
Sandra and I know scores of Republicans, teachers and teacher spouses, that voted for Cruz and Collier.