The small county effect in the RRC runoff

A reader named Kay sent me a link to this Google spreadsheet, which shows how counties that had more than 10% turnout in the Democratic primary runoff voted in the Railroad Commissioner race. Short answer: Mark Thompson did pretty well there.

Primary


Henry votes  Henry %  Thompson votes  Thompson %

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     32,385    37.85          53,183       62.15



Runoff

Henry votes  Henry %  Thompson votes  Thompson %

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

     24,776    36.68          42,771       63.32

These 22 counties have just over 379,000 registered voters among them - which is to say, about as many as there are in Collin County, a little less than fiver percent of the statewide total - but they accounted for 34% of the runoff turnout, and gave Thompson more than half of his 36,000-vote margin of victory.

I presume a lot of these counties, like Webb, had local runoffs going on that drove the turnout totals. As for why Thompson did well in them, it's likely as I said before: having collected nearly a million votes in March, he was the name-ID leader, and coasted home on that. How he got to that position will remain a mystery on par with the fate of Jimmy Hoffa, but I think we've flogged that horse sufficiently. Anyway, I don't know how much light this really shines on things, but I love numbers, and these were interesting. Thanks to Kay for pointing them out to me.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 30, 2008 to Election 2008