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
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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
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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.
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.