Let’s move on to the At Large races. Here’s how the vote went in At Large #1:
Dist Knox Provost
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A 8,758 4,042
B 2,518 13,058
C 14,925 12,240
D 3,692 16,877
E 16,406 4,735
F 4,040 2,871
G 21,391 6,190
H 3,684 5,080
I 3,272 4,340
J 3,029 2,182
K 5,442 9,846
A 68.42% 31.58%
B 16.17% 83.83%
C 54.94% 45.06%
D 17.95% 82.05%
E 77.60% 22.40%
F 58.46% 41.54%
G 77.56% 22.44%
H 42.04% 57.96%
I 42.98% 57.02%
J 58.13% 41.87%
Mike Knox
I suggested before that undervoting might be the key to understanding some of these results. I mean, obviously if everyone who supported Turner also supported other Democrats like Georgia Provost, these downballot candidates would win as well. That never happens, of course – undervoting in At Large races usually exceeds 20% of the total. Given that, the first question to ask is which Mayoral voters kept going down the ballot, and which were one and done? There’s also the fact that not everyone votes uniformly in these races. Some candidates are better known than others, some have appeal that others don’t, and so on.
Both of those factors are in play here. Mike Knox still got beaten badly in Districts B and D, but in each case he exceeded Bill King’s vote totals. I don’t know what the profile of a voter that supported both Sylvester Turner and Mike Knox might look like, but those folks clearly existed.
I can even quantify that to some extent. In my canvass spreadsheet, I subtracted Knox’s total for each precinct from King’s, and Provost’s from Turner’s, then sorted each column in turn to see what the differences looked like:
For Provost, there were 32 precincts in which she had more votes than Turner, for a net gain of 225. For Knox, there were 207 precincts in which he had more votes than King, for a net gain of 3,026.
On the flip side, for Provost there were 568 precincts in which she had fewer votes than Turner, for a net loss of 23,357. For Knox, 383 precincts in which he had fewer votes than King, for a net loss of 19,796.
Put that all together, and Knox had more crossover support, while holding on to more of King’s voters. I’ll be honest, I might have expected the latter, but not the former. I can only speculate about that, and the first thing that comes to my mind is that Provost wasn’t as well known as Knox was. He had more of a campaign, as well as some establishment support, for the November election, while Provost didn’t really have a campaign before the runoff and didn’t have much attention paid to her till then. That’s my guess, and yours is as good as mine. What did you think of this race?
I voted for both Sylvester Turner and Mike Knox.
like you said… Maybe harris county democrats will get their act together and run council candidates with actual ideas and platforms.