Look at voter registration in Harris County

This past weekend the Houston Chronicle’s political writer Alan Bernstein filed a story noting that “Harris County may head into the Nov. 4 election with about the same number of registered voters as in the 2004 presidential contest.”  He went on to say that as of Friday, October 3, there were about 1,912,000 citizens on the voter rolls, and that “the county must add 30,000 new eligible voters just to reach the 2004 level.”  Since I’ve been working with recent registration data for Harris County for several months, these numbers smelled fishy to me. 

For openers, as I noted some time ago in a post, the registered voters in the “Canvas Report – Total Voters – Official” for Harris County in the 2004 presidential totaled 1,876,296, or about 36,000 less than the current total, not 30,000 more.  So we have already surpassed the 2004 total and will doubtlessly add several thousand more as last day registrants are entered into the system.  In fact, I would guess we’ll end up with about 50,000 more official registrants than we had four years, despite the fact that, according to Tax-Assessor Collector Paul Bettencourt, “the 2004 list may have contained many inactive registrations” that have now been reduced by the new policy of the Texas Secretary of State of immediately removing from the Harris County rolls those persons who have registered this year in other counties.  Bottom line:  We have a bigger and cleaner voter registration list this year in Harris County.   

So if we have a bigger eligible voter list, which party’s candidates will likely benefit from that change?   One way to look at this is to take precincts that the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates won decisively in 2004 and compare registration gains this year in these precincts since the March 4th party primaries.  I selected the top 20 precincts that the Republican nominee George W. Bush won with a total vote of more than 2,340.  I then pulled out the top 20 precincts for Democrat John Kerry where he received more than 1,380 votes four years ago.  Since March 4, the voter rolls in the top Republican precincts from 2004 have added 7.52% new total registrants, and the top Democratic precincts have added 7.85%.  So by this measure, the registrations over the last six months look like a push for the two parties.

But, there is a very big difference in these two sets of precincts.  The top 20 Democratic precincts were, in 2004, and remain, heavily minority boxes with very few Republican voters.  For example, in the March 4, 2008 party primaries these precincts cast 25,676 votes in Democratic primary and just 1,097 in the Republican primary.  This means the registration gains this year will almost certainly add to the total vote for Harris County Democratic candidates.  The top twenty 2004 Republican precincts were, of course, carried by George W. Bush, but there was a sizeable Democratic minority (16,990 of 75,583 voters) in these predominately GOP boxes four years ago.  That Democratic minority has grown since November 2004, if the March primary is any indication.  For example, in precinct 764, which has had the largest registration gain in the county since November 2004 (+4288 as of yesterday), the vote in the March 4 Democratic primary was 2,185 compared to just 999 Republican primary voters (Precinct 764 in 2004 was split for the 2008 election and now also includes precinct 388).  Overall, the top 20 Republican precincts in 2004 had almost as many Democratic voters in the March primary (18,869) as Republican voters (19,551).

What has happened over the last four years has been a massive out-migration of Latino and African-American families into previously solidly Republican precincts in north and west Harris County.  Voters from these move-in families turned out heavily in the 2008 Democratic Primary contest between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  The question now is will they come back this fall and vote Democratic now that only one of the two, the senator from Illinois, is on the General Election ballot?

In my judgment, the answer to that question will determine the fate of the county-wide Democrats and Republicans.  If the Democratic vote in these suburban precincts that now have substantial minority populations spikes up as it did in the March primary, local Democratic candidates will win all or almost all down-ballot races in Harris County.  If many of these voters stay home, or switch to John McCain and the Republicans now that Senator Clinton has been eliminated, local GOP office-holders may survive yet another General Election cycle in a county where Anglos constitute a smaller share of the registered voters every year.          

- Dr. Richard Murray

Comments

[CARROLLREDD1]

I PUT IN A COMMENT ABOUT THE WAY GOVERMENT WORKERS FROM ALL LEVELS ARE OUT ON THE STREETS SIGNING PEOPLE UP TO VOTE AND THEN TELL THEM TO BE SURE AND VOTE FOR OBAMA.BUT FOR SOME STANGE REASON,MY COMMENTS WERE NOT PUT ON THE SCREEN. IS 13 ALSO INVOLVED IN THIS SCAM? THIS IS O.K.SINCE BLACKS ARE THE ONLY ONES HIRED TO SIGN PEOPLE UP. NO WHITES ASIANS OR LATINOS ARE OUT THERE. NOW THAT IS STRANGE