If you kept up at all with the Travis County Republican Primary Runoff you know how Tuesday night turned out. Chip Roy is our nominee to succeed Lamar Smith and Mike Toth is our pick for Third Court of Appeals. Here's the Travis county turnout for those curious:
U. S. Representative District 21
Matt McCall 36.06%
Chip Roy 63.93%
2,792 total Travis County votes cast (unofficial count)
Justice, 3rd Court of Appeals District, Place 6
Donna Davidson 53.73%
Michael ("Mike") Toth 46.26%
10,053 total Travis County votes cast (unofficial count)(Across all counties involved both races were decided by a margin of 47-53%. See more.)
And if you got you get your voting information from the local media, you would have mostly noticed coverage of a gubernatorial runoff and several other races on the Democratic ticket, which naturally dwarfed the county GOP turnout.
It seemed improbable that we would break 10,000 votes, given that Congressional District 21 (Lamar Smith's long-held seat) only contained a small portion of southern Travis County and court races are not exactly marquee bouts.
But red voters surprised us by almost doubling turnout since 2016. While we've had higher Runoff turnout before (with more publicized races on the ballot) this means that the core of the Republican presence in otherwise liberal Travis County is steadily growing.
We also notice that there is no substitute for having an active, physical campaign presence in a county. Both races this year featured candidates who spent significant time in Travis County, and this made the difference in terms of GOTV (that's political talk for "get-out-the-vote") and word-of-mouth.
See below for previous GOP Primary Runoff totals, and let us know your own political analysis in the comments section below.
It seemed improbable that we would break 10,000 votes, given that Congressional District 21 (Lamar Smith's long-held seat) only contained a small portion of southern Travis County and court races are not exactly marquee bouts.
But red voters surprised us by almost doubling turnout since 2016. While we've had higher Runoff turnout before (with more publicized races on the ballot) this means that the core of the Republican presence in otherwise liberal Travis County is steadily growing.
We also notice that there is no substitute for having an active, physical campaign presence in a county. Both races this year featured candidates who spent significant time in Travis County, and this made the difference in terms of GOTV (that's political talk for "get-out-the-vote") and word-of-mouth.
See below for previous GOP Primary Runoff totals, and let us know your own political analysis in the comments section below.
2016: We had a Railroad Commissioner's race, not only one but two appellate court races, plus Texas Senate District 24 on the ballot. The final tally was 5,841. And this was the Trump election year.
2014: We had 22,585 voters deciding who the Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Agriculture Commissioner nominees would be, plus a Railroad Commissioner seat. This race featured the big prize fight between incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and then-Senator Dan Patrick, along with the other high-profile contests which garnered significant media attention.
2012: The Ted Cruz vs. David Dewhurst Senate race along with a Congressional race (CD 25), two Railroad Commissioner slots, a Texas Supreme Court race, a State Board of Education position, and a Texas Senate seat (SD 25) drew around 34,700 votes. This would have been the Romney vs. Obama election year on top of one of the more spirited U.S. Senate primaries Texas has seen in modern history.
2010: 13,517 votes came in for Supreme Court Place 3, but we also had more than half that (6,772) vote in the HD 47 race to re-elect Paul Workman to the Texas Legislature.
2008: No runoff in Travis County.
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