GregsOpinion.com

Did the Democrats in Harris County just not make it to the polls? Our County Party Chair continues to make the claim ... Kuff reports. Understandably, when one looks at the numbers and sees that the number of votes for our uncontested State Rep seats underperforms that of GOP uncontested seats, it's pretty easy to say "Yeah, those areas just didn't get to the polls for our candidates."

Unfortunately, it's a lie.

Refer to the chart that Kuff puts up. One question I'll posit for Kuff ... are these numbers what Gerry is presenting or is this work done to check Gerry's stated theory? Whichever the case, it's worth debunking.

Kuff crunches and comes up with the following from the uncontested races:

Dem Avg Votes = 25,167 (201,337 total)
Rep Avg Votes = 37,321 (298,571 total)

This is a perfect case of selective analysis. If, on the other hand, we look at the contested races, we see that turnout is nearly identical among Dem seats be they contested or not ... as well as Republican districts (I count the 149th as a Dem contested seat for this):

                          RVs     Ballots    TO
D-Contested (4 races)   238,790    119,963   50.24%
D-Uncontested (8 races) 535,548    271,671   50.73%
						
R-Contested (5 races)   424709    267,475   62.98%
R-Uncontested (8 races) 677249    429,223   63.38%

The strength in looking at turnout is that if I believe the votes in those uncontested district were to have been enough to match the vote totals of the GOP uncontested, then the turnout in those districts would have had to have been substantially higher than even those with contested races.

Furthermore, there's another factor to consider ... what is the retention of downballot voters to uncontested races. In other words, what is the % of voters who cast their ballots for the uncontested State Rep candidate. In the uncontested GOP districts, for instance, 70% of the ballots cast had a vote for the uncontested State Rep. In Dem districts, only 45% of ballots cast in those races (I look at the total votes in the race, so INDs and LIBs are calculated in this). So, it seems the reason for this vote discrepancy is not that turnout is hideously low. It's that voters aren't casting votes in uncontested races ... something totally unindicative of a voter turnout problem.

Now, back to that turnout number. Trivia question ... how high would voter turnout have to have been for us to make up 97,000 votes entirely from Birnberg's favorite culprit?

The answer is 65% ... higher than the percentage that either contested or uncontested GOP districts saw. That's like saying if the earth stood still and we just got everybody who would vote Dem to the polls while the other side sleeps, we'd win.

For the record, I'm increasingly getting irritated with Gerry's denial.

SIDENOTE: A minor note on that retention % ... the percentages for contested races saw a nearly identical 95% among contested GOP and contested DEM State Rep races. If that tells me anything, it suggests that more contested races would aid and abet voters going all the way down the ballot.

UPDATE: In looking at one example of the uncontesteds: Al Edwards, the mystery of the missing votes is explained thusly ....

Dist 146:
Al Edwards - 36773 votes with no opponent

Tax Assessor (within 146):
Webb - 32,009 (68%)
Bettancourt - 14,997 (32%)
95% of total ballots cast

334th District Court (within 146):
Stone - 34,390 (75%)
McCally - 11,136 (25%)
92% of total ballots cast

So, in order to get the increased number of votes that I think you're looking at Kuff, not only would uncontested Dems have to reach 65% voter turnout in nearly impossible-to-do-so districts, but they'd also have to eliminate the Republican candidates within those districts.

Now that we've settled on a game plan for '06 ........

UPDATE THE SECOND ....
Just to touch on a point raised offline w/ Kuff (actually via email, so I guess it wasn't truly offline ... still), there was an example in discussion about the low turnout of districts such as Joe Moreno's and Rick Noriega's this time around. It's yet another alluring fantasy to suggest that, had Moreno had competition, we might have gotten more Hispanic voters out for Dems, or had Rick Noriega actually been in Houston to campaign, he'd have gotten some of his voters out as well. Moreno's district saw a particularly odious turnout of 39% this time around, as Kuff notes on his numbercrunching.

But when we look at 2000, we see that Moreno actually had a GOP opponent, so surely his more active campaign would have gotten a significantly higher turnout, right? Sure did ... In 2000, turnout was 40.05% ... a drastic uptick from the 39.87% he saw this time around. Congratulations, we just found a way to get all of 8 new voters to the polls - throw a challenger at Joe Moreno.

The Great Rick Noriega Myth is even more telling. Would Rick Noriega have gotten better turnout if he weren't in Afghanistan and/or had a challenge to drive up turnout? Well, once more, we look to 2000 where he was apparently in town and had a GOP challenger. In 2004, his district turned out at 44.24%. But in this magical example of 2000, Noriega's turnout was ... ready for this? ... 42%.

Now, I know ... 2000 districts were drawn differently, so there's a slight oranges-to-tangerines difference there. But given that the nature of these two candidates' districts ought not be drastically different than the current ones, even if you aggregate the totals, the myth of voter turnout is still just that ... a myth.