When Democrats Don’t Vote

As if underlining my previous post on voter turnout, it seems the main culprit for a Fort Bend County Democratic Party rout lies in that very voter turnout.

Or more to the point, lack of one.

Or even more to the point, Republican passion to make this election all about a referendum on Barack Obama. He wasn’t even on the ballot, but it seems Republicans all thought he was and turned out in droves.

I’ll use the straight ticket vote to prove my point.

In 2006 and 2008 it was Democrats who led Republicans in straight ticket votes.

In 2008, a presidential year, 68,517 straight ticket Democratic voters showed up to elect Barack Obama, who nearly won in Fort Bend County, outperforming straight ticket Republican votes by nearly 2,000 votes. Democratic enthusiasm was high.

In 2006 another mid-term election, it was about the same in differences, with 25,260 total straight ticket Democratic votes, again just under 2000 more than straight ticket Republican votes.

But this year, the numbers in Fort Bend County look like this

Straight Ticket Republican Early Vote: 34,486

Election Day Republican Straight Ticket Vote: 17,439

Total Republican Straight Ticket Vote: 51,925

Percent of Total Vote: 37%

Straight Ticket Democratic Early Vote: 20,674

Election Day Democratic Straight Ticket Vote: 18,291

Total Republican Straight Ticket Vote: 38,965

Percent of Total Vote: 27%

See what I mean? Republicans who voted straight ticket out numbered Democrats by nearly 13,000 votes, and Republican straight ticket voters were over one third of all voters who showed up versus a little over a quarter of all voters who voted a straight Democratic ticket.

And compared to performance in the last mid-term, while Democrats increased their straight ticket voting by an over 50% increase over 2006, Republican straight ticket votes rose by 120%.

In other words, yes Democratic interest was high, but Republican interest was higher.

Clearly there was a huge enthusiasm gap that more than made the difference in every single race that the Republicans won in Fort Bend County.

That is, every one of them.

Early Vote Ends with Record Totals

The two-week long early vote period for this year’s mid-term election has finally drawn to a close. And the vote totals at the Fort Bend County Elections website reveals that people are taking advantage of early voting like no other mid-term election ever seen.

Because at the end of the day yesterday, I see that a total of 78,855 voters personally appeared at the 17 early voting locations throughout the county, and that 6,732 mail-in ballots were received by the end of the day. That’s a total early vote turnout of 85,537.

During a “low-interest” mid-term election where no presidential race is on the ballot, this is simply amazing to me.

With a total registered voter population of 309,026, this means that nearly 28% of all registered voters have early voted. This is the second highest voter turnout rate of any of the 15 counties that the Texas Secretary of State keeps tabs on at their website, with Galveston County barely edging Fort Bend County.

The last time we had a mid-term election, in 2006, it was a very different story. In 2006 a total of 39,289 voters had participated in the early voting, a mere 14.67% of all registered voters. And by the end of voting on Election Day of that year, a total of 98,427 votes had been cast in the gubernatorial contest.

So in this year’s early vote we are only 12,890 votes shy of the total Fort Bend voter turnout in 2006.

And Fort Bend is just the tip of the iceberg. In neighboring Harris County which encompasses most of the City of Houston, they are seeing their numbers go through the roof. Richard Murray a demographer at the University of Houston who has also predicted the imminent “Bluing of Fort Bend” thinks he sees who is showing up to vote: white people.

And when more white people turn out to vote, he says, that can’t be good for Democrats.

“Younger voters for Obama, African-American voters, they're always difficult to turn out in a midterm election. It's one of the reasons the Democrats are in trouble.”

But then, on the other hand, Murray has also said that the early vote favors Democrats because Democrats are traditionally lethargic and tend not to vote if not given plenty of opportunity as in this 2-week long early voting period.

So which is it? Will a heavy early vote favor Democratic candidates in Fort Bend? Murray has said it is so. On the other hand, according to Murray, without an African-American at the top of the ballot, African-Americans are staying home this year. But I like it how State Rep Garnet Coleman says it in his evaluation of black voter turnout this year:

“Those were people who never voted in gubernatorial elections anway. So why would anyone expect they would vote now?”

Why indeed?

Fun With Turnout Projections: 2nd Attempt

Last week with one day early voting turnout totals I boldly, and in retrospect, foolhardily attempted to make a voter turnout prediction based on a comparison to the 2008 primary turnout compared to the turnout on day one of early voting.

Remember the prediction? Based on that one day and setting up a simple proportion I came up with the remarkable number of 13,573 Democratic voters, or roughly 19% of the turnout when it was still undecided who would be the Democratic nominee for President.

Then I compared that number to the 2006 mid-term primary election turnout, which saw 6,550 Democratic voters go to the polls. And I predicted that the actual turnout would be somewhere between those numbers.

Well, I have a slight revision based on another tweak of the data.

Now with 7 full days of early voting results in I have run the same proportion calculation for each day’s cumulative totals. Each day, except for yesterday, the predicted turnout decreased. One day by as much as 13%. Here is the daily analysis showing how the prediction changed from one day to the next.

It varies a bit, and Monday was the only day to have an actual gain over the previous day, a no-brainer because that was a figure for Sunday and none of the polls in churches were open. So with today’s numbers the predicted turnout is 9,037 Democratic voters.

But we have 4 more days in the early vote, so I went ahead and calculated the average daily decrease over all 7 days (-7.3%) and applied that to the next 4 days.

Know what I got as a final vote turnout prediction for the 2010 Democratic primary?

6,671 voters.

Spooky, huh?

No the really spooky thing is that in the contested races, if this turnout holds, 3,336 voters will decide the fate of the Fort Bend County Democratic Party for the next 4 years, at a time when Democratic voters will finally attain majority status in this county.

That is 4.7% of the voters who called themselves Democrats in 2008.

Yikes.