Continuing the 2004 postmortem, looking at the turnout-versus-message argument (see here, here, and here)…
I had a chance to hear Gerry Birnbirg’s analysis of the 2004 election, and how Democrats did in Harris County. He downplayed the importance of message while stressing turnout, which Greg and I have discussed in the posts linked above. There was one thing he said which stood out to me, though, and I wanted to check it out. He spoke about how in the various uncontested State Rep races, the Republicans did a much better job getting people to the polls than the Democrats did.
Well, there were sixteen uncontested races (I’m counting any race without a Democrat and a Republican as uncontested – sorry, Libertarians and Independents). Those races split as eight uncontested Dems and eight uncontested Republicans. In those eight races, the Republican incumbents drew a total of 298,571 votes, for an average of 37,321 each. On the Democratic side, the numbers were 201,337 and 25,167.
The difference between the two parties is over 97,000 ballots. If the uncontested Democrats had drawn an equal number of voters, and if those voters had pushed the button for other Democratic candidates, that 97,000 boost to the totals would have been enough to win every contested judicial race. Every single one, from Kathy Stone (47.92%, lost by 42,000) down to Zone Nguyen (45.79%, lost by 85,000). Think about that.
Democrats would have still lost the top-of-ticket countywide races, but Reggie McKamie would have been within 8000 votes of Chuck Rosenthal, and Guy Robert Cark would have lost to Tommy Thomas by less than 15,000. And we’d be talking about how Harris County was just like Dallas County, on the verge of being blue again.
I’m making some assumptions here, of course, but in looking at these numbers, which I have under the More link, I can see where Birnbirg is coming from. I’ll pick this up again in a later post.
(All data from the Cumulative Results page on the Harris County Clerk site.)
UPDATE: Greg responds.
Dist Incumbent Votes Ballots Reg'ed RegPct VotePct Turnout ========================================================================= 129 John Davis-R 40,002 58,414 91,506 43.72 68.48 63.84 130 C Van Arsdale-R 54,026 71,088 102,778 52.57 76.08 69.17 131 Alma Allen-D 28,474 35,807 65,278 43.62 79.52 54.85 132 Bill Callegari-R 40,328 55,543 86,167 46.80 72.61 64.46 133 Joe Nixon-R 21,184 39,406 67,844 31.22 53.76 58.08 135 Gary Elkins-R 31,014 46,107 75,279 41.20 67.27 61.25 136 B Woolley-R 41,719 58,165 85,890 48.57 71.73 67.72 139 S Turner-D 30,151 36,714 73,284 41.14 82.12 50.10 141 S Thompson-D 27,490 36,429 74,294 37.00 75.46 49.03 143 Joe Moreno-D 13,282 19,586 49,074 27.07 67.81 39.87 144 Robert Talton-R 25,873 40,398 73,312 35.29 64.05 55.10 145 Rick Noriega-D 15,160 21,638 48,909 31.00 70.06 44.24 146 Al Edwards-D 36,773 49,157 86,964 42.29 74.81 56.53 147 Garnet Coleman-D 32,566 40,676 76,962 42.31 80.06 52.85 148 Jessica Farrar-D 21,041 31,684 60,783 34.62 66.41 52.13 150 Debbie Riddle-R 44,425 60,102 94,473 47.02 73.92 63.62 Votes = Votes received by that candidate Ballots = Total votes cast in that district Reg'ed = Total registered voters in that district RegPct = Percentage of registered voters who voted for that candidate VotePct = Percentage of total votes which went to that candidate Turnout = Percentage of registered voters who voted Dem Avg Votes = 25,167 (201,337 total) Rep Avg Votes = 37,321 (298,571 total)