At the Presidential level, with votes still being counted.
Though President Donald Trump has been declared the winner in Texas, former Vice President Joe Biden has taken the lead with the latest results in Tarrant County.
Biden had a 427 vote lead in the county after a new batch of votes were added Thursday afternoon.
Around 824,312 ballots have been cast in Tarrant County, according to the county’s election results website.
Tarrant County had a reported 1,185,888 registered voters for the election cycle, per the same website, which meant turnout was 69.51% for this year’s presidential election.
The vote count between Trump and Biden was separated by just a mere 427 votes just before 3 p.m. Thursday, according to the county’s results website.
Tarrant County officials say members of the Ballot Board from different parties have remade and verified 13,636 defective ballots.
The county says it plans to have all ballots counted by the end of the day Friday. Over 15,000 absentee ballots are pending processing.
You can see the Tarrant County election results here. There are still overseas and provisional ballots, and as of the time that story was posted it was not known how many more ballots are being reviewed. Biden’s advantage in the mail ballots was over 13K, which as of this writing was just enough to overcome Trump’s lead in early voting and Election Day voting. Looking down the ballot, the statewide Dems generally trailed by between four to six points, with the Democratic District Court candidates usually falling about seven points short, and the Democratic Sheriff candidate, running against a problematic incumbent, lost by five and a half. Roughly speaking, they’re a few points closer to winning countywide races everywhere on the ballot than Harris County Democrats were in 2004.
Democrats of course fell short in all of the State Rep races that they challenged this year, which in many ways was the more important metric. As commenter blank observed, redoing Tarrant’s State Rep districts in 2021 will present some challenges for Republicans, who have a lot of incumbents in tight spots. It’s not crazy to think that there could be a Dallas-like year for Tarrant down the line if they try to get too cute.
We’ll worry about that later. In the meantime, I need to figure out what new county is the closest proxy for the statewide Presidential results. Between Beto in 2018 and now Biden, Tarrant is officially too blue to serve that role.
In the meantime, I need to figure out what new county is the closest proxy for the statewide Presidential results.
I said Denton earlier in the week, and I haven’t gone back to check if that still makes sense.
A few other nice signs for Democrats in Tarrant County:
–Democrats flipped both Constable Precincts 2 and 7. JP 7 flipped in 2018, and now the district flip is complete. On a more personal note, I know several grassroots Democrats who have worked to flip this district since 2006. One of them passed away from cancer about a year ago. I would like to think that somewhere out there she’s smiling. JP 2 should be a target in 2022.
–Speaking of longtime Tarrant County grassroots Democrats, Ruby Faye Woolridge, who has run for numerous seats in Congress, the State House, and the City of Arlington, finally won a nonpartisan seat of the Arlington City Council. Godspeed Ruby Faye Woolridge.
–Establishment backed Republican Victoria Farrar-Myers was also held under 50% and will go to a runoff in her nonpartisan Arlington City Council race. Honestly, I don’t really have a problem with Farrar-Myers, and I know nothing about her opponent, but this is at least more indication that Arlington, the second largest city in Tarrant County, is trending blue.