As you know, we have a special election for HISD Trustee in district VII on the ballot this November. There’s one Democratic candidate in that race and three Republicans. These races are normally held in odd-numbered years, in which turnout is considerably lower than in Presidential years. Overall turnout in Harris County in 2013 was 13.23%, with turnout in the HISD VII race at 21.86%; this was the highest level among the three contested Trustee races that year. In 2012, turnout in Harris County was 61.99%. There are going to be a lot more people at the polls for this Trustee race than there usually are, is what I’m saying. What effect might that have on the special election?
Well, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats do better in higher-turnout environments. There’s a lot of empirical evidence for this, but just because something is true in the aggregate doesn’t mean it’s true in all specific subsets. Here’s what the numbers look like in HISD VII in 2013 and in 2012:
Pcnct Moore Sung Moore% Sung% Romney Obama Romney% Obama%
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54 79 222 26.25% 73.75% 531 444 54.46% 45.54%
70 271 375 41.95% 58.05% 1,487 825 64.32% 35.68%
129 473 373 55.91% 44.09% 2,369 1,279 64.94% 35.06%
135 377 205 64.78% 35.22% 1,366 657 67.52% 32.48%
139 199 317 38.57% 61.43% 1,027 965 51.56% 48.44%
177 102 134 43.22% 56.78% 628 398 61.21% 38.79%
178 198 177 52.80% 47.20% 878 375 70.07% 29.93%
204 261 537 32.71% 67.29% 1,411 939 60.04% 39.96%
217 480 226 67.99% 32.01% 1,388 633 68.68% 31.32%
227 377 118 76.16% 23.84% 1,089 289 79.03% 20.97%
233 298 351 45.92% 54.08% 1,496 1,310 53.31% 46.69%
234 629 280 69.20% 30.80% 2,327 606 79.34% 20.66%
269 398 125 76.10% 23.90% 1,278 282 81.92% 18.08%
272 77 132 36.84% 63.16% 404 660 37.97% 62.03%
282 112 186 37.58% 62.42% 765 481 61.40% 38.60%
303 541 165 76.63% 23.37% 2,052 404 83.55% 16.45%
312 247 246 50.10% 49.90% 1,286 982 56.70% 43.30%
421 11 19 36.67% 63.33% 45 169 21.03% 78.97%
431 38 40 48.72% 51.28% 309 867 26.28% 73.72%
432 35 55 38.89% 61.11% 158 402 28.21% 71.79%
434 176 128 57.89% 42.11% 657 319 67.32% 32.68%
435 303 304 49.92% 50.08% 1,515 716 67.91% 32.09%
436 257 215 54.45% 45.55% 1,232 762 61.79% 38.21%
491 144 123 53.93% 46.07% 680 438 60.82% 39.18%
567 78 109 41.71% 58.29% 280 748 27.24% 72.76%
569 184 219 45.66% 54.34% 1,192 910 56.71% 43.29%
570 38 90 29.69% 70.31% 414 484 46.10% 53.90%
684 7 4 63.64% 36.36% 58 38 60.42% 39.58%
809 1 2 33.33% 66.67% 10 17 37.04% 62.96%
839 36 37 49.32% 50.68% 113 464 19.58% 80.42%
902 165 246 40.15% 59.85% 869 576 60.14% 39.86%
Total 6,621 5,773 53.42% 46.58% 29,314 18,439 61.39% 38.61%
Harvin Moore
Did that upend your view of this race? It upended mine. Before I get into what this may mean for the candidates, let’s try to answer the question why Republican turnout improved so much more in the Presidential year – or if you want to look at it more chronologically, why it deteriorated more in the off year. Here are a few thoughts about that.
It’s important to keep in mind that odd year elections are different from even year elections, in that there generally isn’t much in the odd years for Republicans in Houston. Bill King last year was the first serious Republican candidate for Mayor since 2003, and he wasn’t running on the kind of culture-war issues that tend to boost Republican turnout in even years. There wasn’t much to draw Republican voters to the polls in 2013, at least in these precincts, so their turnout lagged more compared to 2012 than Democrats’ turnout did.
Along those lines, Anne Sung ran a campaign that strongly identified her as a Democrat and a progressive, which may have helped her draw some people out, or at least ensure that some of the people who had come out anyway continued down the ballot to vote for her. Harvin Moore is a Republican, but he doesn’t have a Republican brand, if you will. You wouldn’t know he was a Republican unless you paid close attention. The difference in branding may have affected some voters in a way that benefited Sung.
Of course, it’s not always about partisan labels. Moore was a strong supporter of former Superintendent Terry Grier; in fact, Moore was the trustee who proposed extending Grier’s contract more than a year before it was to expire. Sung was a critic of Grier’s, and identified herself as such in the campaign. It may be that the closeness of the race was more a reflection of that dynamic than anything else.
Anyway. The point I’m making here is that the higher turnout we’ll see in this race does not necessarily accrue to Anne Sung’s benefit, which is not what I had originally thought. Before I looked at the numbers, I would have said that her best bet to win would have been to achieve a majority in November and avoid a runoff, where turnout would be miniscule. Think Chris Bell in the special election for SD17 in 2008 as a parallel, or what I had thought would be a parallel. In reality, given what we saw in these numbers, I’d say Sung’s job is just to make it to the runoff, then try to drum up enough turnout among friendly voters in that race to win. Conversely, each of the three Rs should want to be the other person alongside Sung in that runoff, and reap the advantage of the district’s natural Republican lean. An R-versus-Sung runoff is preferable to them than an R-versus-R runoff, which will be more about persuasion than turnout.
Looking at the voter data, the partisan score for the 2013 voters isn’t significantly different than the 2016 outcome. That suggests that the difference in outcomes was a function of Rs voting for Anne more than turnout differential among Rs and Ds.
It’s also worth noting that the candidates don’t have party labels on the ballot for these contests. Partisan signals help, but the % of voters that are receiving these signals is always much lower than candidates would like to believe.
I’m also curious if we’ve got examples of HISD or other school board races held in a Presidential year. The dropoff in vote should be substantial and there’s an unknown variable to calculate – which downballot candidate would see the least/most dropoff. This area is also home to the least “straight-party” electorate in the county and has shown other instances of crossover winners in the past (Ellen Cohen, Bill White, and LVdP swing voters being recent examples).