Precinct analysis: Hillary in Harris County

Let’s get started with the precinct data, shall we? Here’s a Chron story from the day after the election about how things looked overall in the county.

Hillary Clinton

The country’s most populous swing county turned a shade bluer Tuesday, when Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump in Harris County despite trailing nationally.

Clinton’s commanding victory here is a watershed moment for local Democrats who have struggled mightily to translate recent demographic shifts into gains at the ballot box.

It also is seen, by some, as a harbinger of potential political change across Texas.

Against the state’s crimson backdrop, Harris County has waffled between red in recent mid-term election years and light blue in presidential ones.

President Barack Obama broke the county’s 44-year Republican presidential voting streak when he won by less than 2 percentage points eight years ago. The offices of sheriff, county attorney and district clerk fell into Democratic hands then, too, as did a swath of judicial posts.

This year, Democrat Kim Ogg ousted Republican Devon Anderson in the highest-profile countywide contest, for district attorney, and Democrat Ed Gonzalez bested Ron Hickman for sheriff.

[…]

Harris County Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson emphasized that the party’s local candidates outperformed Trump in Harris County.

“With such a big headwind at the top of the ticket, we’re still doing fairly well down-ballot,” Simpson said, noting he believes this year is an aberration. “One election alone doesn’t tell you everything about the future.”

As Republicans prepare to battle back in two years, Simpson said the party will be eyeing where and why Harris County voters turned out, as Democrats focus, in part, on Hispanic voter participation.

“The question is whether or not these results were driven by disaffected conservative Republican voters that for this cycle voted Democrat, or is it something structural?” Texas Southern University political scientist Jay Aiyer said. “Are we seeing the beginning of that demographic shift that’s been written about for a very long time as an inevitability?”

Here’s a subsequent article with some maps for those of you who like to see the pictures. As we will see as we go through the data, Hillary Clinton definitely received Republican votes. My estimate of this remains thirty to forty thousand crossover votes overall. There were also some people who clearly voted for Gary Johnson instead of Trump. The combined effect of all this is such that going forward I will not be using the Clinton/Trump numbers as a way of measuring how Democratic or Republican a given district is. I’ll be using numbers from judicial races instead, as I did in yesterday’s post.

So with that said, let’s get to the numbers. I’ve got them grouped by districts – Congressional, State Board of Ed, State House, Commissioners Court, HISD as a whole, HISD District VII, and the part of the Heights that voted on the dry ordinance. Vote totals first, then percentages.

Dist      Trump  Clinton  Johnson  Stein
========================================
CD02    145,264  119,389   10,299  2,353
CD07    120,912  124,408    9,111  2,246
CD09     23,817  108,115    2,328  1,399
CD10     75,361   38,345    3,970    804
CD18     40,914  156,809    5,338  2,038
CD29     33,960   94,815    3,128  1,465
				
SBOE6   300,561  286,273   22,212  5,379
				
HD126    32,551   26,420    1,982    510
HD127    45,097   25,702    2,345    502
HD128    40,621   17,135    1,460    375
HD129    38,545   27,908    2,529    686
HD130    55,140   22,633    2,688    533
HD131     6,202   39,221      661    438
HD132    34,437   31,433    2,350    597
HD133    41,446   31,244    2,740    568
HD134    35,831   49,907    4,044    753
HD135    29,450   28,184    2,006    576
HD137     7,931   18,342      764    355
HD138    24,634   24,646    1,786    467
HD139    10,844   40,064    1,254    472
HD140     6,113   20,964      548    300
HD141     4,839   32,769      525    329
HD142     9,484   34,454      919    360
HD143     8,729   23,823      627    362
HD144    10,541   15,842      761    301
HD145    10,083   23,484    1,104    428
HD146     8,479   38,920    1,064    533
HD147     9,835   46,346    1,756    727
HD148    14,779   30,937    2,195    560
HD149    14,265   28,190    1,006    415
HD150    45,081   27,896    2,587    608
				
CC1      62,935  244,980    7,796  3,146
CC2     119,471  126,335    7,134  2,381
CC3     171,710  169,602   11,638  3,112
CC4     190,841  165,527   13,133  3,116
				
HISD    117,296  312,988   13,766  4,494
HISD 7   27,886   31,379    2,554    517
				
Heights   5,262   10,379    1,107    169


Dist      Trump  Clinton  Johnson  Stein
========================================
CD02     52.38%   43.05%    3.71%  0.85%
CD07     47.11%   48.47%    3.55%  0.88%
CD09     17.56%   79.70%    1.72%  1.03%
CD10     63.61%   32.36%    3.35%  0.68%
CD18     19.95%   76.46%    2.60%  0.99%
CD29     25.46%   71.09%    2.35%  1.10%
				
SBOE6    48.92%   46.59%    3.62%  0.88%
				
HD126    52.96%   42.99%    3.22%  0.83%
HD127    61.23%   34.90%    3.18%  0.68%
HD128    68.17%   28.75%    2.45%  0.63%
HD129    55.33%   40.06%    3.63%  0.98%
HD130    68.08%   27.94%    3.32%  0.66%
HD131    13.33%   84.31%    1.42%  0.94%
HD132    50.04%   45.68%    3.41%  0.87%
HD133    54.54%   41.11%    3.61%  0.75%
HD134    39.58%   55.12%    4.47%  0.83%
HD135    48.91%   46.80%    3.33%  0.96%
HD137    28.95%   66.96%    2.79%  1.30%
HD138    47.80%   47.83%    3.47%  0.91%
HD139    20.60%   76.12%    2.38%  0.90%
HD140    21.89%   75.07%    1.96%  1.07%
HD141    12.58%   85.20%    1.36%  0.86%
HD142    20.97%   76.20%    2.03%  0.80%
HD143    26.02%   71.03%    1.87%  1.08%
HD144    38.41%   57.72%    2.77%  1.10%
HD145    28.73%   66.91%    3.15%  1.22%
HD146    17.31%   79.44%    2.17%  1.09%
HD147    16.76%   79.00%    2.99%  1.24%
HD148    30.49%   63.83%    4.53%  1.16%
HD149    32.51%   64.25%    2.29%  0.95%
HD150    59.18%   36.62%    3.40%  0.80%
				
CC1      19.74%   76.83%    2.44%  0.99%
CC2      46.79%   49.48%    2.79%  0.93%
CC3      48.22%   47.63%    3.27%  0.87%
CC4      51.22%   44.42%    3.52%  0.84%
				
HISD     26.15%   69.78%    3.07%  1.00%
HISD 7   44.73%   50.34%    4.10%  0.83%
				
Heights  31.10%   61.35%    6.54%  1.00%

So as you can see, Clinton carried the following districts: CD07, HDs 134 and 138, Commissioners Court Precinct 2 (Jack Morman’s precinct), and HISD district VII. That doesn’t mean these districts are all suddenly ripe for Democratic takeovers. HD134 was basically ground zero for Republican crossovers – which is basically what I expected going forward. HD134 is almost entirely within CD07, and there’s a fair amount of overlap with HISD VII, so those districts will closely correlate. But as you’ll see with the rest of the numbers, there’s not much else there to get excited about. In fact, the average Democratic judicial candidate in CD07 got almost exactly the same percentage of the vote as James Cargas did against John Culberson. I wish it were not the case, but there’s just nothing to see there.

Now HISD VII is going to be a bit of a special case, because it normally exists only in odd-numbered years, where it will be more subject to variations in turnout and where the non-partisan nature of its elections means that a clear difference in candidate quality can make a difference. There were over 61,000 ballots cast in this district last week, with over 35,000 votes for one of the candidates. What might a runoff electorate look like? We actually haven’t had many HISD runoffs in recent years. Here are the ones I could find:

HISD III, 2015 – 6,189 votes
HISD I, 2009 – 9,730 votes
HISD IX, 2009 – 12,323 votes
HISD III, 2003 – 8,206 votes
HISD IV, 2003 – 16,246 votes

Note that all of those occurred at the same time as a Mayoral runoff, which helped increase overall turnout. The HISD VII runoff will be the only race on the ballot in December. This is a high-turnout district, but I wouldn’t expect much. Maybe eight to ten thousand votes overall.

Back on topic. HD138 and Commissioners Court Precinct 2 are both places where I do believe opportunities exist for Democrats. Both have demographic factors pointing in their direction, and the dropoff from Clinton’s performance to those of other Democrats is not as stark. I keep waiting for CC Precinct 3 to get more competitive, and it is moving that direction slowly, but the key word there is “slowly”. As with CD07 and HD134, don’t be distracted by Clinton’s strong showing in CC3.

Finally, did the Gary Johnson number in the precincts with the Heights dry referendum stand out to you? I live in the Heights, though not in the part that had this vote. I saw a lot more Gary Johnson signs than I’d ever seen for a Libertarian candidate before. I also saw no Trump signs in front of numerous houses where I normally see signs for Republican candidates. They still had signs – for Devon Anderson, for Republican judicial candidates, occasionally for Republican Constable candidate Joe Danna, but none for Trump. I’d say this was Ground Zero for the “not Trump, but not Hillary either” caucus.

More to come over the next week or so. Let me know what you think.

Related Posts:

• It’s a range, not a number
• Initial thoughts: Harris County
• Precinct analysis: District courts