Here are two numbers from Sen.-elect Doug Jones’ victory over garbage human Roy Moore: 92.0% and 49.3%. Jones received 92.0% of the total vote that Hillary Clinton received in Alabama in 2016. Moore received 49.3% of Donald Trump’s vote total. Put that together and you see what you get.
Now of course Alabama was an extreme case, and there were some number of Republicans who voted for Doug Jones. We can’t really say how many since there weren’t ant other elections on that ballot for comparison, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that in Alabama, like in Virginia and New Jersey and multiple special elections around the country, Democratic turnout has been stronger than Republican turnout. In some places that was enough to push Democrats to victory, in others it merely reduced the gap. But it’s there, and it’s been there all year. Remember all those special Congressional elections, where Dems came close but couldn’t quite overcome the large Republican advantage in each? Here’s how they look by that metric of comparing candidates’ results in 2017 to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016. All Congressional data comes from Daily Kos.
James Thompson, 62.2% of Clinton
Ron Estes, 38.4% of Trump
Rob Quist, 93.7% of Clinton
Greg Gianforte, 67.9% of Trump
Jon Ossoff, 80.5% of Clinton
Karen Handel, 84.1% of Trump
Archie Parnell, 35.4% of Clinton
Ralph Norman, 25.6% of Trump
Kathie Allen, 43.7% of Clinton
John Curtis, 45.7% of Trump
Not every election had this characteristic – GA-06 was an outlier because Republicans were able to get their voters out, while I don’t think anyone outside Utah even noticed the UT-03 race – but most of them were, and the same was true in non-Congressional elections, too. This dKos spreadsheet has tracked every election since November of 2016, and documented the partisan shift in each, with a bonus comparison to 2012 as well. The overall trend is clear.
My point for bringing all this up is simply this: The national environment, and the resulting effect on enthusiasm levels for Democrats and Republicans, is and will be a factor in the 2018 election in Texas, just as it was in 2010 and 2014 to Republicans’ benefit and 2006 and 2008 to Democrats’. Alabama may be the most shocking example of this – well, the most shocking example since last month’s elections in Virginia, anyway – yet it seems to be discounted in the discussion of how the 2018 elections may play out here. It’s easy to talk about the lack of “name” candidates at the statewide level for Dems, and the amount of money that people like Greg Abbott have, and so on and so forth, but the bottom line is that base turnout level has been the Dems’ biggest problem in Texas, going back to 2002. I’ve harped on this multiple times, as you know. If that problem is solved, or at least mitigated, in 2018, in part by Democratic motivation to repudiate Trump and in part by a conscious decision noted by RG Ratcliffe to go bottom-up rather than top-down, then that’s a big step in the right direction. Yes, yes, yes, all the usual caveats apply. All I’m saying is that the national mood affects Texas, and right now that is working hard in Democrats’ favor. We all need to keep that in mind.
Now if some of the so called progressive can be convinced that Emmett is not a moderate or a Democrat, there is a good chance that Harris County will be as BLUE as it can get. I don’t care for some of the Democrats but I am going to hold my nose and vote straight Blue that is the best way to send a message to the party of Trump. The party of fiscal irresponsibility, child molesters, the party of hate and many just plain deplorable. As USA Today wrote not even fit to clean Obama’s toilet.