Comparing Davis and White

In 2010, Bill White received 517,487 votes in the Democratic primary, for 76.0% of the vote. Wendy Davis just received 432,065 votes, for 79.1% of the total but 85,422 fewer votes than White. As is always the case, the change was not distributed uniformly. Davis picked up more votes than White in some counties, and lost votes against his total in others. Here are the top 20 counties for net vote increase by Davis:

County Davis Davis% White White% D-W =================================================== TARRANT 38,560 94.02% 19,857 85.53% 18,703 DALLAS 59,649 92.43% 43,430 80.37% 16,219 TRAVIS 43,414 95.75% 34,426 90.17% 8,988 COLLIN 9,030 95.65% 5,023 82.75% 4,007 BEXAR 35,578 85.39% 32,126 76.25% 3,452 DENTON 6,757 95.45% 3,968 85.54% 2,789 VAL VERDE 2,899 51.87% 1,638 59.28% 1,261 LUBBOCK 3,191 81.30% 2,283 53.62% 908 ELLIS 1,897 91.55% 1,389 86.01% 508 WILLIAMSON 6,849 95.44% 6,383 89.98% 466 GREGG 1,744 89.30% 1,344 78.60% 400 ROBERTSON 1,195 74.73% 806 78.25% 389 MAVERICK 2,067 54.67% 1,714 31.33% 353 ROCKWALL 912 94.21% 590 82.06% 322 DIMMIT 1,060 48.47% 810 49.69% 250 COMAL 1,516 92.10% 1,369 87.98% 147 JEFF DAVIS 268 65.37% 137 74.86% 131 ECTOR 907 68.71% 780 59.05% 127 WILBARGER 351 69.09% 237 83.16% 114 PARKER 1,273 93.33% 1,163 88.85% 110

While Davis had a higher percentage of the vote than White in 15 of these 20 counties, the main driver of her gains was higher turnout in the given counties. In particular, there was higher turnout in her home county of Tarrant, which you’d hope would be the case, with contested primaries in SD10 and CD33 also helping. As discussed before, busy county elections in Bexar, Dallas, and Travis helped push those totals up. For those who have been freaking out about the South Texas results, I would like to point out the significant increases in Collin and Denton counties, neither of which had even a single contested local race on the Democratic Party ballot. Not only was Democratic turnout up in these counties from 2010 (6,770 to 9,441 votes in Collin, 4,639 to 7,079 in Denton), it was down in the Republican primary (56,934 to 44,621 in Collin, 42,261 to 37,657 in Denton). Of course there were still a lot more R votes in these counties than D votes, but the goal isn’t to win them in November it’s to cut into the margin. Maybe this is worthy of a fraction of the attention paid to Wendy Davis’ percentages in South Texas.

That’s as good a segue to the counties in which she lost votes compared to White as any. There were only a handful of gainers for her beyond those 20 above. Most of the ones in which she lost votes were small amounts, largely due to the overall turnout decline. Here are the bottom 20 for Davis, the counties in which she lost the most votes from White’s 2010 totals:

County Davis Davis% White White% W-D =================================================== LAMAR 522 87.44% 1,743 87.24% 1,221 MATAGORDA 975 74.37% 2,234 83.83% 1,259 ZAPATA 535 34.92% 1,803 56.40% 1,268 LIBERTY 501 88.99% 2,030 88.84% 1,529 HARDIN 423 87.58% 1,953 78.03% 1,530 NUECES 5,411 70.38% 6,954 65.66% 1,543 CASS 514 79.57% 2,170 82.32% 1,656 MONTGOMERY 2,345 93.80% 4,056 90.43% 1,711 HAYS 2,954 94.35% 4,733 85.03% 1,779 TRINITY 327 85.83% 2,176 83.31% 1,849 ANGELINA 789 86.99% 2,768 88.15% 1,979 BRAZORIA 2,601 91.62% 4,683 90.44% 2,082 ORANGE 1,141 85.40% 3,562 81.81% 2,421 BOWIE 260 86.67% 3,349 79.44% 3,089 JEFFERSON 9,322 87.75% 12,600 75.92% 3,278 GALVESTON 3,969 91.71% 7,398 89.55% 3,429 HIDALGO 16,994 47.34% 21,353 60.04% 4,359 WEBB 10,446 44.18% 15,732 56.82% 5,286 FORT BEND 7,745 92.97% 13,272 90.59% 5,527 HARRIS 47,372 92.17% 89,378 90.02% 42,006

Harris County accounts for almost one half of her decline all by itself, not surprising given that turnout overall in Harris was down by about half. Note that Davis did better in vote percentage in Harris, as was the case in the big counties where she gained. White had to campaign for his primary win, and he did what he needed to in terms of driving turnout in his own backyard. Fort Bend, Galveston, Montgomery, Liberty, Brazoria, even Angelina Counties would be part of that same effect. Jefferson and Orange are less Democratic and less populated than they were in 2010. Hays County had no contested local primaries; I can’t tell what else may have gone on in 2010 because their crappy county elections page has no past election results on it at this time, but according to the Secretary of State page, then-Rep. Patrick Rose had a primary challenger in 2010, so that probably helped drive some turnout. As for Webb and Hidlago, you already know the story there. Note as I said before that White didn’t exactly kill it in those counties, and overall turnout was the same in 2014 in Hidalgo as it was in 2010; it was down from 27K to 23K in Webb.

Anyway. You can make of these numbers what you will. I just like to have them all in front of me whenever possible.

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One Response to Comparing Davis and White

  1. Norman says:

    Let me try to add some insight from my neck of the woods. In Jeff Davis County, the incumbent county judge didn’t seek reelection, and there was a two-way race to succeed him. There were no GOP county races, and neither party had contested primary races in 2010. Jeff Davis is a border-area purple county with an Hispanic percentage larger than the state mean and a workforce dominated by fed and state government employees. Dems historically dominate county offices. Although the last statewide Dem to carry the county was John Sharp, GOP statewide candidates record much smaller margins of victory within the county than they do statewide. The county has also strongly supported Rep. Pete Gallego.

    In short, Jeff Davis is dominated by independent ticket splitters who flock to the Democratic primary when local races are contested, but pick GOP ballots when the statewide action offers the only meaningful choices.

    In Ector County, the driver behind Dem primary turnout is Commissioners Pct. 4. This precinct, anchored in Odessa’s historically Hispanic south side, is the only Democratic turf in the otherwise strongly red county. This year featured primary challenges to the precinct’s incumbents for both county commissioner and justice of the peace.

    Ector is a county where Battleground Texas needs to roll up their sleeves. The county already is about half Hispanic, and explosive population growth means their maps drawn to protect the GOP are quickly going out of date. Strong GOTV efforts and candidate recruitment could yield surprising results there. Flipping another commissioners precinct is within the realm of possibility before the decade is out.

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