The bluing of Harris County

So as we know, turnout in the Harris County Democratic Party primary was more than double that of the Republican primary - 409,619 to 170,836. And we also know that there's been a certain amount of trash talk by Republicans who claim that the Democratic numbers were inflated by GOPers crossing over to mess with the Presidential race.

Fine. But let's take a look down the ballot, where presumably those mobs of Republican moles didn't bother to play, as there was little to gain. What you see there is top-to-bottom dominance of Democratic turnout compared to their Republican counterparts. To wit:

- Rick Noriega, in receiving 56% of the ballots cast in the Senate primary in Harris County, got more votes (179,069) than were cast in the GOP primary. John Cornyn (127,802) and Larry Kilgore (22,882) combined for 150,000 votes.

- David Mincberg, in receiving 75% of the ballots cast in the Harris County Judge primary, got more votes (179,875) than were cast in the GOP primary. Ed Emmett (77,858) and Charles Bacarisse (61,643) combined for 139,000 votes.

- Diane Trautman, in receiving 69% of the ballots cast in the Harris County Tax Assessor primary, got more votes (166,592) than the unopposed incumbent, Paul Bettencourt (128,140), and just missed getting more votes than were cast in the GOP primary.

- Adrian Garcia got more votes in the Harris County Sheriff primary (152,756) than all three GOP candidates combined (135,639). Incumbent Tommy Thomas, who won renomination, got 99,341 votes..

- C.O. Bradford, running unopposed for District Attorney, got 227,331 votes. The cast of four on the GOP side, in one of the hottest races over there, combined for 140,695. Bradford's amount is more than double the total garnered by runoff competitors Kelly Siegler (58,141) and Pat Lykos (43,928).

- Loren Jackson received 218,972 votes for District Clerk. The two Republicans running for District Clerk combined for 122,529, with appointed incumbent and winner Theresa Chang getting 74,151. Similarly, Vince Ryan received 218,379 votes for Harris County Attorney. Republican incumbent Mike Stafford got 106,217.

- Every single judicial primary on the Democratic side drew significantly more votes (a minimum of 209,232) than were cast in the entire GOP primary. The highest-drawing judicial primary on the GOP side got 115,858 votes.

- As noted previously, Michael Skelly (55,699) got more votes in his primary for CD07 than John Culberson (44,406) got in his.

- Here are some comparisons for State Rep contests:

Dist   Dem candidate  Dem votes  GOP candidate  GOP votes

=========================================================

126             Khan      9,115     Harless(I)      7,879

127        Montemayor     9,757   Three people     13,367

129            Matula    10,033     Two people     10,148

133           Thibaut     7,614      Murphy(I)      4,967

134          Cohen(I)    18,528     Two people      7,796

135           Fleming     8,036      Elkins(I)      5,422

138           McDavid     7,096       Bohac(I)      5,204

143      Hernandez(I)     6,852          Olmos        806

144           Redmond     7,833   Three people      5,741

145          Alvarado     6,791      Rodriguez        911

148         Farrar(I)     9,695           Gano      1,685

149             Vo(I)    10,905         Meyers      3,849

150              Neal     9,675         Riddle      9,742

That's amazing. Look in particular at HDs 129, 133, 138, and 144, which are the top targets for Democrats this fall. In each case, the Democrat outperformed the Republican (John Davis, who won in HD129, got 6,525 votes), even with the CD22 primary drawing out voters in HD129. The point I'm making is that the Democrats will start off with a larger number of identified voters in these districts, and won't be too far behind in even the more heavily Republican areas.

- One last point. In 2004, when I think everyone would agree that the Democrats who turned out for the primary were the true hardcore, the average undervote for the uncontested judicial races (which was all of them that year) was about 35%. This year, with an electorate almost six times as big, full of first-time primary participants, the dropoff rate was about 45%. The point I'm making is that even though Barack Obama (227,886) and Hillary Clinton (175,724) got more votes on their own than were cast in the GOP primary, most of the people who came out to vote for them stayed around to vote for every other Democrat as well. I'm sure there's another poll out of Florida that looks good for John McCain, but I think all these numbers look damned good for the Harris County Democratic Party. I need a good night's sleep, but after that I'm ready for November. Let's keep the enthusiasm going.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on March 05, 2008 to Election 2008