Burnt Orange Report

Statesman Election Postmoretem

By Vince Leibowitz

Guest Post by Vince Leibowitz

As part of its continuing series "The Great Divide," the Austin American Statesman this weekend continued the postmortem of the presidential vote in Texas.

Perhaps the most interesting point the Statesman noted concerning this year's election nationwide was this:

It was actually a series of local landslides, as Americans continued a decades-long process of sorting themselves geographically into like-minded communities.

...

[T]he share of voters living in such lopsided communities rose consistently in the 1980s and 1990s, according to previously reported studies conducted by American-Statesman statistical consultant Robert Cushing, a retired University of Texas sociologist.

By 2000, 45 percent of all voters lived in one of these landslide counties.

This year, the polarizing trend continued: 48.3 percent of voters lived in a county where the very close contest between George W. Bush and John Kerry was in fact a local landslide.

Considering I don't live in one of those landslide counties, I found it even more interesting that:

[T]he country as a whole remains evenly split. Bush beat Kerry by just over 2 1/2 percentage points.

The 516 counties that voted Democratic in both 2000 and 2004 have on average four times the number of voters as the 2,374 counties that voted Republican in the past two elections.

That's reasonable, though, given that most Democratic counties are predominantly urban, or minority.

The Statesman also points to a trend in Ohio that seemed to hold pretty true in Texas:

Most of Bush's new support in 2004 grew out of these smaller exurban and rural counties, especially in the states that decided this election.

In Ohio, for example, Bush lost ground to the Democrats in the cities and suburbs, at least on a percentage basis. Bush gained votes in all areas, as turnout increased dramatically from 2000 to 2004.

But in urban and suburban counties, Sen. John Kerry gained more than the president. Kerry earned 66 percent of the vote in Ohio's most urban counties, according to an analysis conducted by Greenberg's firm.

In less dense areas of Ohio, however, Bush cleaned up. The president won 62 percent of the rural vote in Ohio (to Kerry's 37 percent) and 59 percent in exurban counties.

The Statesman even illustrated how the trend held true (mostly) in Texas:

The emerging divisions can be seen clearly in Texas, as the state's urban centers began to trend Democratic while the suburbs, exurbs and rural counties remained solidly Republican.

Bush won Dallas County by 10,000 votes, for example, but the president boosted his 2000 total by only 23,000 votes. Kerry gained 60,000 more votes there than Al Gore won in 2000.

In Harris County, Democrats increased their totals by a few thousand more than Republicans, and Kerry increased the Democratic vote in Travis County by 71,000 compared with Gore's 2000 total. Bush received only 6,000 more votes in Travis County than he got four years ago.

In Ellis County, an outer county south of Dallas, however, Republicans gained more than eight votes for every new Democratic vote.

However, after taking data the Statesman complied here and amplifying it, I came to some interesting conclusions.

In particular, I don't believe all is lost for Democrats in East Texas. For example, only 25 counties in Texas actually showed gains when the percentage the county voted Democratic for president in 2004 was compared to the same in 2000. One of those counties is Nacogdoches County in deep East Texas. Granted, while the percentage the county voted Democratic for president increased from only 32.0637% to 33.6343%, it doesn't seem like a lot. But, when considering that more than 225 Texas counties increased the percentage of votes they gave to Bush by anywhere from one tenth of one percent to 13 percent, it is pretty significant that a gain occurred in East Texas.

When looking at the counties that posted percentage Republican gains, it brings even more good news for East Texas. The area's largest counties in terms of population--Smith and Gregg--posted GOP gains of less than half a percent. This means either the GOP voting base in those counties has reached its limit and is turning out at its full potential or Democrats are making significant gains.

In Smith County, for example, 13,468 more people cast ballots in 2000 than in 2004. Of those, 3,467 more voters cast ballots for Kerry than for Gore in 2000, but 10,001 more people cast ballots for Bush than in 2000. In my view, (and it's difficult to really dissect this without registration numbers for both years), I think the Republicans have just about hit the celing in terms of votes they are going to be able to tap in Smith County.

Where the GOP stands to gain the most, however, is in "exurban" counties, those rural counties that are rapidly becoming suburban.

But, what needs closer examination is why we are losing votes in our key Democratic strongholds. With the exception of Travis County, which went for Bush in 2000, none of the Texas counties that went for Kerry went for Kerry in as high a percentage as they went for Gore. What's happening there?

Duval County, for example, went for Gore by 79.8 percent. It was Gore's best county in Texas in 2000. In 2002, however, it was only third best, giving Kerry 71.54 of its votes. It actually came in behind two other counties that gave Gore smaller margins in 2000 and saw the margins they gave Kerry decrease this year. Other counties that went for Gore by good margins fell off the wagon, so to speak, and went for Bush: Reeves, Culberson, Frio, Cameron, Robertson, Newton and Morris.

Part of the problem, obviously, is turnout. 924 less people voted in Duval County, for example. But turnout isn't all of the problem. Cameron County, a Gore County in 2000 but not a Kerry County, saw 7,500 new voters, most of which were Republican. This helped turn the tide there becuase Kerry actually received more votes than Gore, but not a higher percentage.

So, where do we go from here? Over the next couple of weeks, I plan on gathering data from at least the East Texas counties to compare down ballot trends from 2000 to 2004. And, though doing anything on a county-by-county, candidate-by-candidate will be a nightmare, I think it's an important thing to do in order to examine trends at all levels. Obviously, some counties that went head-over-heels for Bush still have courthouses and legislative seats under Democratic control.

From there, I believe Democrats in every part of Texas need to look at three things: money, marketing, and message. The first two are obvious, but the third's kind of tricky. The fact is, we have to craft messages that will work for local candidates in various parts of the state and then help parlay this into an overall Democratic message for Texas.

We've also got to look toward what our counties will do in 2006. Obviously, the Texas GOP has made it clear with its hiring of Jeff Fisher as political director, that it is going to start meddling in county races in 2006. The Democratic Party of Texas is going to have to do something similar, and develop a real, concrete program to help its county parties.

Thanks, by the way, to Byron and the guys here at Burnt Orange Report for inviting me to be a guest poster this week. I promise any future guest posts here won't be soooo long ordramatic.

Vince Leibowitz is County Chairman of the Democratic Party of Van Zandt County. He founded the recently discontinued Free State Standard, a weblog dedicated to Texas politics, in 2003. He is presently a contributor for the Political State Report.