I’m still waiting for the full landscape canvass data from Harris County – things are a bit up in the air right now because of the lawsuit filed by the local GOP, but I expect to get that data soon, and when I do I’ll do the usual set of analyses on it for you. In the meantime, I’ve been idly speculating about my own precincts in the Heights. I saw a lot of Mealer signs around, which is in part because she lives in the neighborhood, but it got me wondering if there was a significant crossover vote for her here. I never saw a yard that had both a Beto sign and a Mealer sign in it, but maybe those who voted that way wanted to keep it on the down low. The only way to know is to look at the data.
So I went to the canvass reports that are available now on the HarrisVotes website. I specifically wanted to see what the vote for Beto looked like versus what the Lina Hidalgo vote looked like in the two precincts around where I live and where I spend most of my time. For comparison, I did the same for 2018, to see how much Beto/Emmett crossover there was. It’s a limited look – I’ll be able to learn much more when I have the full landscape report – but all I’m looking for here is quick and dirty. That will do for now.
Here are the numbers. I added the vote totals for the two precincts. The percentages include the third party (and for 2022 County Judge, write in) candidates, so they don’t sum to 100. Note that precincts were redrawn last year, and the net effect is that there are more voters in them in 2022 than in 2018.
Year Candidate Vote Pct
=============================
2018 Beto 1,819 72.0%
2018 Cruz 674 26.7%
2018 Hidalgo 1,205 49.2%
2018 Emmett 1,169 47.8%
2022 Beto 2,546 70.2%
2022 Abbott 1,019 28.1%
2022 Hidalgo 2,279 63.6%
2022 Mealer 1,302 36.3%
So yes, there were Beto/Mealer voters in my neighborhood. That’s not surprising, given that Beto got 54% of the vote and 595K votes total, while Hidalgo got under 51% and 553K votes. As I said, I won’t know if our neighborhood was substantially different than others in the improvement that Mealer had over Abbott until I get the full picture. She did fall well short of Ed Emmett in 2018, getting a bit more than half as many crossovers as he did then. Again, not a big surprise given Beto’s 58% versus Hidalgo’s 49% four years ago. Indeed, my neighborhood was a pretty good proxy for the count as a whole in the County Judge’s race in 2018, but it was significantly more Democratic in that race this year. Make of all that what you will.
From a turnout perspective, in 2018 2,527 of 3,431 registered voters came out, for 73.7% of the total. In 2022, it was 3,641 out of 5,298, or 68.7% turnout. The county as a whole declined from 52.86% to 43.54%, so again not a surprise. If anything, the decline was less steep here than elsewhere. But a decline it was.
Anyway, that’s what there is for this comparison. I will of course look at this in more depth once I have the data I need.
+5 and counting…….
Just anecdotally, I don’t think a single Hidalgo 2018 – Mealer 2022 voter existed, whereas lots of Emmett 2018 – Hidalgo 2022 voters did. It wasn’t an entirely uncommon sight in 2018 to see a mcmansion with Beto, Fletcher and Emmett signs. Mealer’s entire strategy was to limit the latter crossovers, get out Republican turnout and keep down Democratic turnout. She arguably did the first two, but did not do the third.
In one of the only Republican precincts left inside the loop, I did a lot of walking outside in the leadup to the 2020 election. Nobody had the guts to put up a T man sign in front of God and Country, but the houses with Wesley Hunt signs were good proxies. Lots of houses with Biden signs.
I think only one house with a Biden sign had a Mealer sign two years later. It was mostly the houses that had Hunt signs two years ago. Lots of them had other signs this time. Abbott, a judicial candidate here and there and several signs that said stuff like “Tired of Crime? Vote Republican Judges!”
I am sure that Emmett is more like able than Abbott and Cruz beats everyone in how universally he is disliked. Thanks for doing this analysis. In my med center precinct, Hidalgo got 62.5% of the vote, Mealor 37.5%. 57% of the registered voters made a selection in this race. Our boundaries didn’t change in redistricting.
Beto got 69.3% and Abbott 29%. 58% of the registered voters made a selection in this race. Sorry I don’t have 2018 at hand.
“Tired of Crime? Vote Republican Judges!”…hilarious. Reminds me of the one sign I saw a few years ago that said “Tired of Stray Dogs? Vote Republican Dog Catchers!”.
I guess the equivalent novel crime sign that I saw on the Dem’s side this year was… “Tired of Nut Job Conspiracy Seditious Whackos? Vote Democrat!”.