When you get 91.34% of the vote in an election, as Beto did in the Democratic primary for Governor, there’s usually not a whole lot of interesting data beneath the surface. But you never know until you look, so I went and got the numbers for the Dem gubernatorial primary by county and sorted them by Beto’s percentage. Here are some highlights from that:
County Diaz% Cooper% Beto% Voters
===========================================
Maverick 16.40% 10.48% 60.71% 6,653
Frio 8.14% 6.87% 71.72% 2,518
Dimmit 10.41% 7.97% 71.98% 1,845
Duval 8.18% 6.73% 75.62% 1,858
Webb 8.55% 5.29% 77.02% 17,675
Jim Wells 8.23% 6.57% 78.71% 3,866
Cameron 6.99% 4.71% 81.46% 19,705
Hidalgo 6.44% 3.87% 81.68% 37,309
Jefferson 2.35% 12.72% 83.33% 12,637
El Paso 2.93% 2.14% 91.61% 37,017
Fort Bend 2.64% 3.69% 92.02% 39,613
Harris 2.10% 3.22% 92.83% 157,880
Nueces 2.63% 2.52% 93.17% 13,426
Dallas 1.98% 3.14% 93.53% 126,203
Tarrant 2.18% 3.03% 93.77% 73,413
Bexar 2.30% 1.38% 94.13% 94,334
Montgomery 2.25% 1.87% 94.13% 10,585
Travis 2.98% 0.85% 95.00% 108,831
Denton 1.85% 2.01% 95.09% 27,340
Collin 1.77% 1.36% 95.48% 36,368
I limited myself to counties where at least a thousand votes had been cast, though obviously I didn’t include all of them. Maverick was easily Joy Diaz’s best county, while Jefferson (where he’s from) was Michael Cooper’s best. I didn’t include the other two candidates in this table because they weren’t interesting, but Inno Barrientez had his best showing in Frio County, with 8.02% of the vote.
You might look at some of these places and think that this is a sign of weakness on Beto’s part, since the low-scoring places are mostly heavily Latino. I would invite you to consider how he did in these counties in 2018 before you arrive at such a conclusion.
County Beto 18 Beto 22
==========================
Maverick 22.13% 61.71%
Frio 23.84% 71.72%
Dimmit 29.07% 71.98%
Duval 41.58% 75.62%
Webb 41.65% 77.02%
Jim Wells 40.24% 78.71%
Cameron 46.77% 81.46%
Hidalgo 50.50% 81.68%
Sema Hernandez got over 60% in Maverick, almost 60% in Frio, and over 50% in Dimmit. She won a plurality in Duval, Webb, and Jim Wells, and had over 40% in Cameron and Hidalgo. I largely pooh-poohed the “Beto underperformed in the Latino counties!” hot takes in March of 2018 and I stand by that, but however you felt about those numbers then, it’s very different now.
He really crushed it in the big counties, with Collin the winner as Most Beto-est County Of Them All. You could do this same sort of comparison with 2018 as well if you wanted – Beto got 65.5% in Collin in 2018, 57.7% in Dallas, and 59.1% in Harris – but all we’re really saying is he got a lot more votes from basically the same size electorate. However you slice it, that much remains.