Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial
Other jurisdictions
Appellate courts, Part 1
Appellate courts, Part 2
Judicial averages
Other cities
District Attorney
County Attorney
Sheriff
Tax Assessor
County Clerk
HCDE
Fort Bend, part 1
Fort Bend, part 2
Fort Bend, part 3
Brazoria County
No, I had not planned to do any more of these, at least not until we got the statewide numbers. But then I got an email from Marc Campos on behalf of Sen. Carol Alvarado, who had seen the earlier comparison posts and wanted to know if I had those numbers for SD06. I didn’t at the time, but I do now thanks to getting the full jurisdiction data, so I went back and filled in the blanks. And so here we are.
Dist Romney Obama Johnson Stein
=====================================
SD04 44,973 12,531 502 165
SD06 43,852 89,584 1,004 537
SD07 196,017 93,774 2,844 816
SD11 67,586 29,561 1,106 366
SD13 26,894 144,882 1,041 524
SD15 88,851 131,838 2,198 933
SD17 109,529 79,412 2,265 737
SD18 7,161 3,804 97 25
Dist Trump Clinton Johnson Stein
=====================================
SD04 45,530 17,091 2,123 376
SD06 39,310 109,820 3,666 1,770
SD07 189,451 127,414 10,887 2,632
SD11 63,827 37,409 3,537 918
SD13 24,061 143,864 3,046 1,787
SD15 82,163 159,360 8,511 2,389
SD17 91,838 105,496 7,455 1,764
SD18 8,780 6,017 476 119
Dist Trump Biden Lib Grn
=====================================
SD04 55,426 25,561 936 145
SD06 61,089 123,708 1,577 770
SD07 232,201 188,150 4,746 1,216
SD11 77,325 51,561 1,605 389
SD13 38,198 166,939 1,474 753
SD15 110,485 208,552 3,444 1,045
SD17 110,788 140,986 2,706 720
SD18 15,118 12,735 331 91
Dist Romney Obama Johnson Stein
=====================================
SD04 77.31% 21.54% 0.86% 0.28%
SD06 32.49% 66.37% 0.74% 0.40%
SD07 66.80% 31.96% 0.97% 0.28%
SD11 68.53% 29.97% 1.12% 0.37%
SD13 15.52% 83.58% 0.60% 0.30%
SD15 39.70% 58.90% 0.98% 0.42%
SD17 57.06% 41.37% 1.18% 0.38%
SD18 64.59% 34.31% 0.87% 0.23%
Dist Trump Clinton Johnson Stein
=====================================
SD04 69.92% 26.25% 3.26% 0.58%
SD06 25.43% 71.05% 2.37% 1.15%
SD07 57.34% 38.57% 3.30% 0.80%
SD11 60.39% 35.39% 3.35% 0.87%
SD13 13.93% 83.27% 1.76% 1.03%
SD15 32.55% 63.13% 3.37% 0.95%
SD17 44.46% 51.07% 3.61% 0.85%
SD18 57.04% 39.09% 3.09% 0.77%
Dist Trump Biden Lib Grn
=====================================
SD04 67.54% 31.15% 1.14% 0.18%
SD06 32.64% 66.10% 0.84% 0.41%
SD07 54.47% 44.13% 1.11% 0.29%
SD11 59.08% 39.40% 1.23% 0.30%
SD13 18.42% 80.51% 0.71% 0.36%
SD15 34.15% 64.46% 1.06% 0.32%
SD17 43.41% 55.25% 1.06% 0.28%
SD18 53.47% 45.04% 1.17% 0.32%
I’ve limited the comparisons to the Presidential numbers from 2012 through 2020, which you see above, and the Senate numbers for 2012 and 2020, which I’ll present next. There wasn’t much difference between the Senate numbers and the RRC numbers, so I made this a little easier on myself. There’s nothing in this data that we haven’t seen and talked about before, but it’s worth taking a minute and reviewing it all again.
If we look at SD06, which is a heavily Latino district, you can see the increase in support for Trump from 2016 to 2020, which has been the story everyone has been talking about. I think it’s instructive to include the 2012 numbers, because the net change over the eight year period is basically zero from a percentage perspective – Obama carried SD06 by a 66-32 margin, while Biden carried it 66-33 – the vote gap increased by over 16K in the Dems’ favor. It’s true that Biden won SD06 by fewer votes than Hillary Clinton did, and that Trump closed the gap from 2016 by eight thousand votes, but the overall trend for this period is one that I find as a Democrat to be satisfactory. The overall direction is what I want, even if it’s not as fast as I’d like it to be. What happens next is the argument we’re all having, and there’s data to support either position. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
The flip side of that is what happened in SD07, Dan Patrick’s former district and one of the redder places in the state in 2012. Here, the trend is unmistakably in one direction. Mitt Romney’s SD07 was as Republican as SD06 was Democratic. Hillary Clinton shaved 41K off of the Dem deficit in 2016, and Joe Biden shrunk it by another 18K. In 2020, SD07 was only a ten-point GOP district. It would not be crazy to view it as a swing district, at least at the Presidential level, in 2024. I don’t know what the Republican redistricting plan is, but they’re not going to have a lot of spare capacity to borrow from in SD07. Just take a look at SD17 – which includes a lot of turf outside Harris County – to see why this make them a little nervous.
Finally, a few words about a couple of districts I don’t usually think about in these analyses, SD13 and SD15. The total number of votes in SD13 didn’t increase very much from 2012 to 2020 – indeed, it’s the one place I see where both Trump and Clinton got fewer votes than their counterparts in 2012 – and that is something I’d like to understand better. (For what it’s worth, Borris Miles got about 40K votes in Fort Bend in 2020, while Rodney Ellis got 32K in 2012. That’s a slightly higher growth rate than in Harris, but still kind of slow compared to other districts.) Trump 2020 snipped a couple of percentage points off Romney’s deficit, from down 68 to down 62, but that’s still a net 10K votes for Dems. As for SD15, it’s an example of a strong Democratic district that really stepped it up over the past eight years, performing in that way much like a lot of formerly dark red areas. Biden gained 55K net votes over Obama, as SD15 went from a 19 point Dem district to a 30 point Dem district. We’re going to need more like this around the state as we go forward.
Dist Cruz Sadler MyersCollins
=====================================
SD04 44,387 12,129 849 408
SD06 45,066 84,671 1,701 1,364
SD07 194,269 90,258 4,579 2,116
SD11 66,327 28,875 1,736 779
SD13 27,839 139,516 1,866 1,357
SD15 88,594 127,006 3,709 2,178
SD17 107,576 76,803 3,396 1,801
SD18 7,135 3,637 175 78
Dist Cornyn Hegar Lib Grn
=====================================
SD04 56,085 23,380 1,405 393
SD06 59,310 115,620 3,609 2,257
SD07 237,216 173,948 7,682 2,796
SD11 77,887 47,787 2,508 854
SD13 39,386 157,671 3,502 2,149
SD15 114,616 195,264 6,065 2,657
SD17 118,460 128,628 3,892 1,603
SD18 15,268 11,859 554 180
Dist Cruz Sadler MyersCollins
=====================================
SD04 76.30% 20.85% 1.46% 0.70%
SD06 33.39% 62.73% 1.26% 1.01%
SD07 66.20% 30.76% 1.56% 0.72%
SD11 67.26% 29.28% 1.76% 0.79%
SD13 16.06% 80.49% 1.08% 0.78%
SD15 39.58% 56.74% 1.66% 0.97%
SD17 56.05% 40.01% 1.77% 0.94%
SD18 64.35% 32.80% 1.58% 0.70%
Dist Cornyn Hegar Lib Grn
=====================================
SD04 69.02% 28.77% 1.73% 0.48%
SD06 32.80% 63.95% 2.00% 1.25%
SD07 55.64% 40.80% 1.80% 0.66%
SD11 60.36% 37.03% 1.94% 0.66%
SD13 19.43% 77.78% 1.73% 1.06%
SD15 35.43% 60.35% 1.87% 0.82%
SD17 46.42% 50.40% 1.53% 0.63%
SD18 54.80% 42.56% 1.99% 0.65%
The Senate numbers don’t tell us a whole lot that we didn’t already know, but do note that MJ Hegar slightly increased the percentage point gap in SD06, where it had shrunk by a point for Biden. That may be more a reflection of Paul Sadler’s candidacy than anything else, but I wanted to point it out. Hegar’s overall numbers are lesser than Biden’s, as we knew, but the same trends exist in the districts. If you never had the 2016 data for the Presidential race and only knew how things changed from 2012 to 2020 as you do with the Senate races, I wonder how people’s perceptions would differ.
This time I really mean it when I say that’s all she wrote. When we have the full numbers from the Texas Legislative Council I’ll have more to say, and then the real fun will begin when redistricting gets underway. (And by “fun” I mean “existential horror”, but you get the idea.) Let me know what you think.
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