Both Stace and I have noted the handful of counties in which President Biden underperformed in the primary election. That led me to wonder what the analogous situation was like on the Republican side. Where did Nikki Haley overperform her 17.43% total? A little copy-and-paste into Excel, and we get some answers:
County Haley% Uncom% Trump%
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Travis 35.82% 1.99% 58.70%
Dallas 28.86% 1.78% 66.27%
Jeff Davis 25.76% 4.77% 66.77%
Collin 24.74% 2.25% 69.75%
Tarrant 23.58% 0.76% 72.97%
Williamson 23.57% 1.81% 71.31%
Brazos 22.40% 2.66% 69.20%
Hays 22.30% 1.31% 71.08%
Denton 21.85% 2.03% 73.06%
Bexar 21.81% 1.20% 74.28%
Harris 19.73% 1.76% 75.66%
Taylor 19.55% 4.42% 72.67%
Fort Bend 19.17% 1.91% 75.15%
McLennan 18.82% 2.50% 74.88%
Rockwall 18.32% 3.08% 75.30%
Kendall 18.25% 1.64% 77.25%
Bell 17.98% 2.97% 75.68%
Llano 17.86% 2.46% 77.09%
Nacogdoches 17.38% 4.19% 74.90%
Comal 17.33% 1.52% 78.93%
Lubbock 17.24% 1.39% 78.40%
Couple things to note: One is that there were a bunch of other Republicans on the ballot, because our filing deadline was last December and basically no one had dropped out yet and those who did drop out at a later date generally did so after the statutory deadline to be removed from the ballot. So several other names, from Meatball Ron to Chris Christie to Vivek whatshisname to that guy from Arkansas, plus two other dudes I guarantee you’ve never heard of, were all on there. None of them got enough votes to bother with, but if you’re wondering why the rows don’t add to 100%, that’s the reason. Two, “Uncommitted” was also on the ballot, and it finished third overall. Yep, 1.96% of the primary voters who cast a vote in that contest said “nah, none of these jokers”.
I almost didn’t include Jeff Davis County because there were only 629 total votes there, but I figured I’d have had to footnote its exclusion if I did that, so may as well just leave it in. Every other county besides Llano (6,460 votes) and Nacogdoches (9,689) had at least 10K ballots cast, so we can call them all reasonably interesting.
In looking at this list, I don’t suppose I’m surprised that it’s the big urban and suburban counties that dominate it. We know who Trump supporters are for the most part, and we know what the dwindling base of anti-Trump Republicans look like: urban/suburban educated professionals, etc etc etc. I suppose it would have been a shock to see smaller rural counties on this list; other than those three I mentioned, they’re all either their own metro area (Taylor County is Abilene) or proximate to one. There are of course urban/suburban areas in which Haley didn’t do better than her average – Nueces County is the first big area farther down the list, followed later by Galveston and Montgomery and the rest. I’m sure one can come up with reasonable guesses as to why this one is and that one isn’t.
I have to think that this list provides some opportunity for Democrats, in that at least some Haley supporters ought to be woo-able. My eyes particularly fall on Collin and Tarrant, given the other business we have in those counties. I hope the Colin Allred campaign is thinking about this, because the Biden campaign is unlikely to spend any money here and I don’t know what other resources there may be. If you know a friendly billionaire or two I could talk to about this, please let me know.
The bottom of this list, where Haley did the worst and Trump the best, is filled with smaller counties as you’d expect. Webb County (6.75% for Haley) is the first place with 100K or more total voters, though only 4,519 there cast a ballot in this race. Liberty County (6.80% for Haley) is the first place with at least 10K votes cast, and the next with that many votes is Parker (9.08% for Haley). You have to go all the way up to Parker County (13.53% for Haley; it’s just west of Tarrant and home to Weatherford) to crack 20K votes cast. As for “Uncommitted”, the following counties had at least five percent of voters peace out like that:
Crosby – 5.22%
Deaf Smith – 5.26%
Bee – 5.45%
Refugio – 5.83%
Dawson – 7.05%
Loving – 7.45%
All small places, with Loving (94 total votes, of which 7 were Uncommitted) of course being the smallest. Hope you enjoyed this.
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