I don’t have a canvass of the primary vote from the County Clerk yet – sometimes they send out a draft canvass on their own, or they send one to someone I know who shares it with me, and sometimes I have to ask. I’ll probably ask later this week if I don’t have one soon. Primary canvasses are less interesting than November canvasses for obvious reasons, but there are a few questions I have that the data may help me with.
State data is still being compiled as well, but if you want an interesting look at the data we have from early voting – which remember is only for the top fifteen counties by voter registration, then Austin political consultant Derek Ryan has you covered. See here and here for the breakdowns. If you saw any references to who was voting during the EV period, including here, it came from his work.
What I have done as we await more data is put together this spreadsheet that compares turnout in the 2014 and 2018 gubernatorial primaries, on a county by county basis, for both parties. I’ve sat on it for a couple of days because I couldn’t think of anything to say about it that was both sufficiently interesting and not obviously BS in terms of analysis. In the end, I figured I’d just share the spreadsheet and let people do what they want with it. There are tabs for the 2014 and 2018 results by county for Dem and GOP primaries, then there are summary tabs (Dem Sum, GOP Sum) that show the change in turnout from 2014 to 2018 – positive means 2018 was higher than 2014. The Overall Sum tab shows the Democratic share of the primary vote in each county per year. What that means is that in 2014, 40.03% of the votes cast in the gubernatorial primaries in Bexar County were in the Democratic primary, while in 2018 that figure was 54.69%. This is a way of showing how the turnout changed from county to county.
Another way of doing that is on the last tab, the Per County tab, where I sorted everything by voter registration population, so those top 15 counties are at the top. The numbers in the unlabeled columns are the sums of the Growth columns to that point. What that means is this: Turnout in the gubernatorial primaries increased by 406,335 for Democrats in the top 15 counties, and by 104,357 for Republicans in those counties. It increased by 33,472 for Dems in the next fifteen counties, and by 26,759 for Republicans. Finally, it increased by 23,868 for Democrats in all other counties, and by 98,131 for Republicans in all other counties. You can see why this contributed to the surprise many people had when the results for the full state came in and they seemed to differ from the top-15-centric early vote results.
Anyway, there’s that data. I may return to this kind of analysis for other things if I can think of an angle. If you have any questions, let me know.
Trump energizes the base of the new Republican Party – rural, bigoted, religious, far-right. This turnout reflects this.
I partially blame hate talk radio which is the only political news they get except there is a history of this before talk radio.
The rural south is a different world view than the cosmopolitan urban voters.
The new GOP base is what used to be the Southern Conservative Democrats from when the Democrats in the South battled between the progressive and racist wings of the party.
The media, all college-educated and usually non-churchgoers, are just disconnected from that world.
One example of this was from the Kerry campaign. The Swift Boat Liars tried to smear Kerry’s record in Vietnam. Major media quickly discredited the attacks and the Kerry campaign and media thought it was a non-issue. Talk radio still pushed the stories and when conservatives couldn’t get airplay on TV they produced an infomercial that had heavy play on only rural and Christian TV stations. They weren’t interested in people buying their $5 dvd, it was a chance to get an hour of veterans and POWs saying what a traitor Kerry was without rebuttal in voters houses.
With gerrymandering these rural voters have an outsized influence in state government and the influence of more informed voters is diluted.
Rural voters, the small counties in Texas, are as motivated for the GOP and Trump this election as the more informed Urban counties are motivated against him as shown by the data you have.
Yes Gary and what you are saying is what?
Not all rural voters are bigots or idiots, some of them can think and do what is right for their country or their pocket book. Those same bigots have been using paperless people since they stole Texas and other parts of the country from Mexico. They need their labor to survive.
What the right wing hater have done is spread a message that no one has bothered to challenge.
Today I hope that Lamb will win and that will send a message to the traitorous Republicans.
A whole lot of hate in y’all’s two posts. Keep on spouting the same kind of hate that you so oppose. You only hurt the Democrat party.
Yeah Paul is that the new Trumpkins alternative reality.
You won’t vote for a Democrat because of what I or someone else states, says a ton about you.
Me, I don’t support racists and the people who support racists. Trump came down an escalator to state that Mexicans were rapists or drug dealers, there are some exception he thinks. Well I think that there may be some exceptions to Trump supporters not being racist, but they are exceptions.
I never said who or whom I vote for. Those are your words. However you are full of hate I am pretty sure of that.
The significant data point is that many more of the D primary voters this cycle had no prior primary voting history, while most R primary voters had votes R in multiple past primaries.
No Paul, I am not full of hate, that is what the new Republican talking points are. I keep up with everyone does politically to get a message across. The Trump/Republican message is that if one is against racism or bigotry, one is full of hate.
I will admit that I will celebrate when they put Trump behind bars.
Good job Mainstream of pointing out how racist the Trump Party has become in your comment about how less sounding Anglo names did poorly in the Trump primary (Big Jolly). Antu endorsed by everyone and lost big is what you pointed out as proof.
While it is not official it looks like Lamb won, thus far I am 2 for 2. I sent money to Jones (Alabama) he won. I sent money to Lamb and it sure looks like he won. I sent money to Beto and I believe that he will win.
Trump is the traitor that keeps giving presents to the Democrats.