Bush Fatigue in Highland Park

Wayne Slater makes what is probably just a throwaway point - that George W. Bush is still pretty popular in the Republican enclave of Highland Park, Texas.

Not that there was much doubt in my mind that Highland Park and University Park will be the last holdouts in Dallas County's continuing march to blue, but I thought I'd do a little fact-checking to see what the math was.

Basically, I've got GIS info good for three comparison points: 1994, 2004, and 2008. 1994 represents the first election Bush stood for in Texas. While 2008 doesn't exactly capture Bush's personal ranking, it's worth looking at.

1994 - Ann Richards ... 24.9%

2004 - John Kerry ..... 21.5%

2008 - Barack Obama ... 27.7%

For further analysis, it might be helpful to add in a control case. In this instance, the results of Democratic nominee, Lupe Valdez, in her 2004 and 2008 campaigns for Dallas County Sheriff.

2004 - Lupe Valdez .... 20.1%

2008 - Lupe Valdez .... 18.4%

Now we've got an interesting set of data. Highland Park's overall turnout decreased slightly in 2008 from 2004 by a modest amount. Relevant only in the context of the overall turnout rising. But also to underscore that Obama's improved performance did not come here from higher turnout. And while it might be a plausible theory to suggest that dampened turnout here might account for some of the improvement his numbers saw over Kerry, the returns for Lupe Valdez suggest that this isn't quite the case.

In short, we've either got some honest-to-goodness Bush fatigue at work here or we've got a case of suburban support for Obama (or maybe an instance of suburban disdain with Sarah Palin?). This isn't the biggest needle-moving shift in the political world, but it's a start. Even for Highland Park.

Precincts analyzed: