Mapping the GOP DA Contest

Finally, a bit of time for some more mapping. This one's a bit more complex of a look, so bear with me. I'll start off with the overall view of the county in the GOP 4-way for DA. Dark red is Kelly Siegler, Light red is Pat Lykos. The white boxes are zero boxes - a standard I'm gradually trying to perfect into my methodology.

Now, since this was a 4-way contest, here's some relevant numerical views of the race. First is the overall, intial outcome:

Siegler       58,149  (41.3%)
Lykos         43,935  (31.2%)
Lietner       23,824  (16.9%)
Perry         14,811  (10.5%)
-----------------------------
Total Vote   140,719  

This second view identifies those precincts where each candidate got 45% or better. Basically, just identifying particular areas of strength within each candidates' win column.

Some more number give an indication of what the picture means:

        |  Siegler-45     |  Lykos-45
N       |     110         |      31
Siegler |  18,407 (48.2%) |   2,959 (33.8%)
Lykos   |   9,813 (25.7%) |   4,238 (48.4%)
Rest    |   9,965 (26.1%) |   1,553 (17.7%)
TV      |  38,185         |   8,750  

If the overall map didn't make a strong enough statement, this combined map/math view should. For starters, Siegler won a plurality in many of the key GOP regions: Northwest Harris County, Kingwood/Humble/Atascocita, and a large chunk of the southeast part of the county. Lykos held her own in the areas where Bacarisse did well. But the question for the runoff is whether that's good enough of a toehold. What stands out in the math breakdown above is that Lykos performed worse in Siegler's strong areas than Siegler did in Lykos' strong areas. And given the geographic base that Siegler has, I've got to believe she's got the inside track for the runoff.

Lastly, here's a closeup of one of the more contested portions of the county in this race. For Lykos, the friendly turf centering around I-10 up through Spring Branch is going to be critical for her to expand on. The two basically split Bellaire & West U; Lykos appears to have done marginally better in the River Oaks & Greenway precincts. For Lykos to win, though, the map just basically has to change. So that means a lot of work in Clear Lake, Kingwood, the westside Villages, and Champions Forest is going to be critical.

It's worth adding that turnout will shift dramatically and this potentially helps Lykos a bit. For a clearer view, I Think it might be worthwhile to crunch some numbers of say, the westside precincts that looked like the two candidates split. Who knows whether I'll get around to that, though. In the meantime, enjoy the pretty pixels.