So what happened to the turnout?

That's the question a lot of people are asking.

Where were the voters who supposedly were going to push election turnout in Harris County to breath-taking heights?

They stayed away from the polls, leaving turnout only 2 percentage points beyond the participation rate in the prior presidential race here -- and probably preventing Democrats from sweeping every contest in a formerly Republican county.

That "2 percentage points" figure appears to come from a higher estimate of the total number of registered voters than what's being shown by the County Clerk. A 60.3% turnout rate, which is what the story sidebar gives, yields about 1,964,000 voters. Going by the 2008 results page, the County Clerk uses 1,892,656 as the total registered voters figure. That's lower than what we'd been told before the election. I'm not sure how to reconcile the two; perhaps the CC number doesn't include voters who cast provisional ballots. In any event, if you compare 2004 to 2008 and use the County Clerk numbers, the turnout figure rises from 58.03 to 62.60, a gain of over four and a half points.

Democratic leaders had said total turnout of about 1.3 million would allow them to piggyback on Barack Obama's popularity and defeat all GOP candidates on the local ballot.

Democrats indeed made deep inroads Tuesday, unseating most judicial incumbents and ejecting Sheriff Tommy Thomas, but there was no sweep and no giddy showing of voters.

Local Democratic Chairman Gerald Birnberg said his party struggled to get former supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential primary candidacy to return to the polls and vote for Obama and the rest of the party's slate. Clinton was immensely popular among Hispanic voters in Texas.

"The head wind was the demoralization of many of the Hispanic Hillary Clinton supporters and that was a reality we faced throughout the election," Birnberg said.

As Democratic political consultant Marc Campos of Houston pointed out, Tuesday's election totals put turnout in mostly Hispanic state House districts at 40 to 45 percent, compared to 60 to 65 percent in mostly white, suburban districts as well as mostly black districts.

Campos, a Hispanic, said his party's efforts to motivate Hispanic voters was substandard. Birnberg disagreed, saying that among other things, Democrats aimed at Hispanic households with a recorded telephone message from Clinton urging voters to back every candidate.

It's not exactly news that Campos and Birnberg disagree on matters like this, especially on the question of outreach towards Hispanic voters. Campos has been criticizing the local party for not having such a strategy in place for years. As for the "disaffected Hillary voters" thing, all I can say is that once we got past Labor Day, I never heard anyone talk about that any more. I'm sure some of it was still there, I'm just saying it stopped being a hot topic of conversation.

About 100,000 people who voted in the spring Democratic primary failed to vote in the county's general election, according to Rice University political scientist Bob Stein.

"I don't think they're disinterested in politics. I think it's the way we conduct our elections and how we make it very difficult for people who move around a lot to re-register," he said.

Republican Paul Bettencourt, the voter registrar re-elected as county tax assessor-collector, rejected Stein's theory.

About 100,000 other people easily updated their registrations for the general election, he said. Also, he theorized that turnout would have been much higher if Obama or John McCain or their running mates would have campaigned in Houston.

I've already said that I think having the Obama campaign pay some attention to Texas would have made a difference, so I'll agree with Bettencourt on that point. But let's pause here and break out some numbers, because I think they tell an interesting story. I'm going to compare turnout across the mostly Hispanic and mostly black State Rep districts from 2004 to 2008, since that to me is the salient issue.

HD   04 votes  04 voters  04 pct  08 votes  08 voters  08 pct

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140    19,039     48,512   39.25    18,482     45,008   41.06

143    19,566     49,074   39.87    17,712     44,390   39.90

145    21,638     48,909   44.24    20,796     45,985   45.22

148    31,684     60,783   52.13    34,493     60,153   57.34

Tot    91,927    207,278   44.35    91,483    195,536   46.79


131    35,807     65,278   54.85    41,132     66,116   62.21

139    36,714     73,284   50.10    40,443     70,569   57.31

141    36,429     74,294   49.03    43,094     74,876   57.55

142    37,838     75,861   49.88    42,392     72,547   58.43

146    49,157     86,964   56.53    52,562     83,463   62.97

147    40,676     76,962   52.85    44,517     75,882   58.67

Tot   236,621    452,643   52.28   264,140    443,453   59.56

Let's stipulate up front that this is a crude measure, since black and Hispanic voters are everywhere in Harris County, and since some of these districts (like 148) have Anglo areas that generally have high turnout. Be that as it may, the first thing that strikes me is that these ten districts combined to lose over 20,000 registered voters since 2004. Now again, maybe what they've done is gained provisional voters - I don't know what the County Clerk's methodology is - but I don't think it can be disputed that this had an effect on final turnout numbers. That the total number of voters went up by 28,000 when the registered voter pool shrank is impressive. But that leaves a big question: Why did the number of registered voters shrink? I'd like to know the answer to that.

The other point to make is that while turnout did indeed rise more in the black districts than in the Hispanic ones, it was still below the countywide average overall and in every district except 131 and 146. So again, the question has to be asked, what happened? I can't answer these questions without access to much more fine-grained data points. But maybe someone who has access to that data can tackle them.

One more thing: Everyone overestimated the turnout on Election Day based on the high volume of early voting. How much more voting was done early this year than before? Here are the figures for these districts:

HD   04 early   04 total  04 EV%  08 early   08 total  08 EV%

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140     4,750     19,039   24.95     7,877     18,482   42.62

143     5,371     19,566   27.45     7,052     17,712   39.81

145     5,666     21,638   26.19     8,996     20,796   43.26

148     9,169     31,684   28.94    18,164     34,493   52.66

Tot    24,956     91,927   27.15    42,089     91,483   46.01


131    13,420     35,807   37.48    26,189     41,132   63.67

139    11,787     36,714   32.10    26,097     40,443   64.53

141    15,087     36,429   41.41    29,333     43,094   68.07

142    14,623     37,838   38.65    27,730     42,392   65.41

146    19,766     49,159   40.21    32,063     52,562   61.00

147    14,722     40,676   36.19    26,519     44,517   59.57

Tot    89,405    236,621   37.78   167,931    264,140   63.58

Let's file those numbers away for future reference. I think the percentage of voters who came out early may have peaked a bit this year, thanks to the heavy efforts to make them do exactly that, but I suspect it won't come down too much from there. The one factor I can't judge is how many people decided that it was a greater hassle to vote early, based on the huge increase in that propensity by others, and will go back to the fuddy-duddy way as a result. My guess is we'll see at least 50% participation in early voting as the new norm, but it won't go past 60% unless there's another concerted push to get people out early. Hold these thoughts for 2012!

Posted by Charles Kuffner on November 06, 2008 to Election 2008