Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
I had meant to get to this last week, but SeditionPalooza took up too much of my time, so here we are. The intent of this post is to compare vote totals in each of the State Rep districts from 2012 to 2016, from 2016 to 2020, and from 2012 to 2020. The vote totals compared are from the Presidential and Railroad Commissioner races for each of these years, and for the Senate races from 2012 and 2020, as there was no Senate race in 2016.
President
Dist 12-16 R 12-16D 16-20R 16-20D 12-20R 12-20D
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HD126 -3,207 5,285 6,100 9,611 2,893 14,896
HD127 -931 6,042 8,547 12,707 7,616 18,749
HD128 124 2,272 8,728 6,208 8,852 8,480
HD129 -3,226 5,992 8,844 11,033 5,618 17,025
HD130 2,216 6,749 14,229 13,325 16,445 20,074
HD131 -649 2,707 4,306 6,683 3,657 9,390
HD132 3,065 10,267 15,786 20,304 18,851 30,571
HD133 -7,791 8,688 5,592 12,018 -2,199 20,706
HD134 -10,938 15,346 6,692 17,904 -4,246 33,250
HD135 -2,571 6,505 6,664 11,473 4,093 17,978
HD137 -537 2,443 2,451 4,167 1,914 6,610
HD138 -2,804 6,451 6,537 9,433 3,733 15,884
HD139 -1,294 1,187 4,847 6,854 3,553 8,041
HD140 -733 4,416 4,146 1,855 3,413 6,271
HD141 222 -681 2,604 4,453 2,826 3,772
HD142 290 2,084 4,703 8,880 4,993 10,964
HD143 -1,042 3,226 4,500 1,495 3,458 4,721
HD144 -1,039 3,561 4,057 1,523 3,018 5,084
HD145 -1,291 5,594 5,310 5,088 4,019 10,682
HD146 -1,633 -884 2,459 6,864 826 5,980
HD147 -1,272 3,583 4,602 9,933 3,330 13,516
HD148 -1,489 8,544 5,634 10,180 4,145 18,724
HD149 -3,879 3,420 8,154 4,696 4,275 8,116
HD150 503 8,228 10,180 15,037 10,683 23,265
Total -39,906 121,025 155,672 211,724 115,766 332,749
Senate
Dist 12-20R 12-20D
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HD126 3,705 13,479
HD127 8,876 16,687
HD128 8,999 7,330
HD129 7,238 14,684
HD130 18,113 17,564
HD131 3,413 8,389
HD132 19,527 28,278
HD133 2,610 16,268
HD134 3,330 27,237
HD135 4,898 16,279
HD137 2,129 6,023
HD138 4,594 14,227
HD139 3,602 6,608
HD140 2,611 5,499
HD141 2,460 2,779
HD142 4,903 9,702
HD143 2,619 4,082
HD144 2,577 4,485
HD145 3,562 10,103
HD146 1,337 4,811
HD147 4,019 12,164
HD148 5,762 16,497
HD149 4,282 7,157
HD150 11,865 20,878
Total 137,031 291,210
RRC
Dist 12-16 R 12-16D 16-20R 16-20D 12-20R 12-20D
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HD126 -1,676 3,559 4,735 10,131 3,059 13,690
HD127 1,006 4,180 6,933 13,217 7,939 17,397
HD128 989 1,200 7,749 6,681 8,738 7,881
HD129 -1,550 3,595 7,325 12,422 5,775 16,017
HD130 4,403 4,540 13,107 12,954 17,510 17,494
HD131 -465 1,814 3,419 6,824 2,954 8,638
HD132 4,638 8,171 14,267 19,768 18,905 27,939
HD133 -4,382 3,417 5,039 14,285 657 17,702
HD134 -5,177 6,106 5,497 23,976 320 30,082
HD135 -1,163 4,634 5,398 11,950 4,235 16,584
HD137 -132 1,538 1,929 4,571 1,797 6,109
HD138 -1,483 4,248 5,378 10,328 3,895 14,576
HD139 -551 -83 3,837 7,033 3,286 6,950
HD140 -321 2,969 2,874 2,855 2,553 5,824
HD141 181 -896 2,165 3,773 2,346 2,877
HD142 844 1,204 3,814 8,568 4,658 9,772
HD143 -550 1,586 3,148 2,910 2,598 4,496
HD144 -530 2,677 2,993 2,255 2,463 4,932
HD145 -531 3,369 3,983 7,142 3,452 10,511
HD146 -1,047 -2,256 1,853 7,402 806 5,146
HD147 104 536 3,510 11,837 3,614 12,373
HD148 665 4,416 4,945 12,352 5,610 16,768
HD149 -3,089 2,133 6,698 5,331 3,609 7,464
HD150 2,552 6,010 8,826 14,942 11,378 20,952
Total -7,265 68,667 129,422 233,507 122,157 302,174
The columns represent the difference in vote total for the given period and party, so “12-16” means 2012 to 2016, “16-20” means 2016 to 2020, and “12-20” means 2012 to 2020. Each column has a D or an R in it, so “12-16R” means the difference between 2016 Donald Trump and 2012 Mitt Romney for the Presidential table, and so forth. In each case, I subtract the earlier year’s total from the later year’s total, so the “-3,207” for HD126 in the “12-16R” column for President means that Donald Trump got 3,207 fewer votes in HD126 than Mitt Romney got, and the “5,285” for HD126 in the “12-16D” column for President means that Hillary Clinton got 5,285 more votes than Barack Obama got. Clear? I hope so.
Note that there were 130K more votes cast in Harris County as a whole in 2016 than there were in 2012, and 320K more votes cast in the county in 2020 over 2016, which makes a grand total of 450K more votes in 2020 than 2012. Some districts grow faster than others, but as a general rule given the overall totals you should expect increases in each district to some extent.
I have left percentages and third party totals out of this discussion. As I have shown before, tracking changes in vote percentages can give a misleading view of whether the actual gap is growing or narrowing, and by how much. I also want to emphasize that in 2012, Harris County was very much a 50-50 proposition, and now it is very much not. Doing it this way help illustrate how and where that has happened, and by how much.
And yet, with all that said, I’m going to start with an observation about percentages. In 2012, Mitt Romney got 60% or more of the vote in eight State Rep districts – HDs 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 138, and 150. Ted Cruz, running for Senate against Paul Sadler, got 60% or more of the vote in ten State Rep districts, the same eight as Romney plus HDs 132 and 135 – yes, the same 132 and 135 that Dems won in 2018. I didn’t publish an analysis of the RRC race from that year, but a review of the spreadsheet that I created at the time confirmed that Christi Craddick, running against Dale Henry, got 60% or more of the vote in eleven State Rep districts, the same ten as Cruz plus HD134. In other words, every single Republican-held State Rep district in Harris County in 2012 was at least a 60% Republican district in the Railroad Commissioner race. Mitt Romney, it should be noted, just missed getting to 60% in HDs 132 and 135, and was over 57% in HD134, as was Cruz. (Let’s just say Cruz fell way short of that mark in 2018.)
You can see how much the vote totals shifted at the Presidential level from 2012 to 2016. Trump got nearly 40K fewer votes than Romney, a combination of crossovers, third-party and write-in voting, and just the gentle degradation of the Republican brand, as you can see by Wayne Christian’s reduced vote totals from Christie Craddick. Still, in 2016, Donald Trump scored 60% or more of the vote in three State Rep districts: HDs 127, 128, and 130. In 2016, Wayne Christian, running for RRC against Grady Yarbrough, scored 60% or more of the vote in four State Rep districts: the three that Trump got plus HD150. And finally, in 2016, Eva Guzman, running for State Supreme Court, scored 60% or more of the vote in six State Rep districts: the four Christian got plus HDs 129 and 133. HDs 132 and 135 were clearly competitive at the Presidential level – Trump won 132 by four points and 135 by two points; he also lost HD138 by a hair. He lost votes compared to Romney in 18 of 24 districts.
It is certainly true that Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular did better in 2020 than most people expected them to do – surely, they did better than I expected them to do. Trump gained 155K votes over his 2016 total, which put 2020 Trump more than 100K votes ahead of Mitt Romney. Even though Joe Biden gained 211K votes over Hillary Clinton, for a net gain of 56K, Trump had net gains on Biden in seven districts – HDs 128, 130, 140, 143, 144, 145, and 149, with the latter five being Democratic districts and four of the five being Latino. Still, Dems had a net gain from 2012 to 2020 in every district except HD128, and some of those gains were truly huge – just look at 133 and 134, for starters. And Trump’s gains in the Dem districts largely melted away by the time you got to the RRC race, with Chrysta Castaneda coming close to matching Jim Wright’s increases in 140, 143, and 144, and far exceeding him in 145. It’s hard to say from this what if any staying power the Trump gains may have, though Dems should be paying close attention to what happened there regardless.
Anyway, back to the percentages: In 2020, Donald Trump, John Cornyn, and Jim Wright scored 60% or more of the vote in two State Rep districts: HDs 128 and 130. The only statewide Republicans to score 60% or more in a third State Rep district were the statewide judicial candidates who did not have a Libertarian opponent – Jane Bland, Bert Richardson, Kevin Patrick, and David Newell – who also reached that level in HD127. I haven’t published the statewide judicial race analysis yet so you’ll have to take my word for it for now, but in any event I trust you see the pattern. This is what I mean when I say that Republicans just don’t have any spare capacity in Harris County, and that will present problems for them in redistricting. Look at the numbers in districts like 126 and 129 and 133 and 150 in 2020, and compare them to the numbers in 132 and 135 and 138 in 2012. Where do you think things are going to be in another couple of cycles?
I’ve thrown a lot of words and numbers at you, so I’ll wrap it up here. I hope this helps illustrate what I’ve been saying, about how Dem gains have largely come from huge steps forward in formerly Republican turf, and how there’s still very much room for Dems to improve in their strongholds. We need to keep building on our gains from this past decade as we proceed into the 20s. I’ll have a look at the statewide judicial races next. Let me know what you think.
HD-128 is the only district in which Republicans gained ground in all 3 races in the 8-year horizon. They also picked up more votes than Democrats in HD-130 in the down-ballot races. That makes me think they really should draw a 9R-16D map that focuses on protecting incumbents in redistricting.
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