HD48 vote analysis by precinct

[sonias]

The West Austin Democrats have put up an analysis of the Donna Howard win in House District 48. If you're a wonk and like looking at the numbers you'll love this.
West Austin Dems HD48 Analysis

The Austin Chronicle also ran a story of the victory, which is where I got the link to the West Austin Dems analysis.

Howard Defeats Bentzin
The West Austin Democrats had tapped the HD 48 race as a top priority this year, said club president Hunter Ellinger. The Republicans, he said, "spent a ton of money and almost doubled their vote in the run-off, so the real story here is, why is it that they still can't turn out people to vote?" Ellinger scoffs at GOP attempts to spin Tuesday's results as just another liberal Travis County stunt. "This is the most establishment district you can think of," he said. "It's conservative establishment and it's liberal establishment. It's Karl Rove, it's Liz Carpenter. But it's mostly a Republican district that is pro-public-schools."

Ellinger spent Tuesday night assembling a functional analysis of precinct-by-precinct returns and comparing them to past elections (posted on the West Austin Democrats' Web site, www.westaustindemocrats.org) "Just looking at the precincts, there were some Republicans who voted for Donna," he said, "but I think for the most part that the people who are willing to go vote for Bush are now so disgusted with Perry and the others that they just stay home." On that point, even while Bentzin's 9,281 vote total was 81% higher than last month's election, it still wasn't enough to pull him out of his January slump, Ellinger said. "That would almost always be enough to win a run-off, but Howard increased her vote by 88%." Indeed, the overall turnout was a surprisingly high 22.24%.

Sonia

[acmejack]

1. Thank you, Sonias

I shall examine these with great interest. I see Ben got actually got more votes than I gave him credit for, I was working with 8000 so it actually only cost them around $86.20 a vote! Harhar... It gives one some perspective on just how valuable they feel these seats are.
a

edit, spellchecker hasn't had it's coffee or it can't spell great...

[GOPisEvil]

2. Yikes! Turnout in my precinct was ANEMIC!!

Fire the precinct chair!!! Oh, wait...:evilgrin:

Oh well, of those of us that voted, we went overwhelmingly for Donna. :D

[sonias]

3. Damn it GOPisEvil we're going to have to give you some lashes

No really, I think considering the short amount of time we had to work this race, kudos to everyone. I know you were out there flyering doors. Make sure to take a look at the 2004 numbers (link at the top of the page). You may have done better than the prior election i.e. maybe it was more anemic before and you helped kick it up a notch.

Sonia

[GOPisEvil]

4. Actually Steve V. walked my precinct.

:)

Actually I'm working off really old data. There was no precinct chair before me. So, I'm hoping to start with the people I meet at the precinct convention and go from there.

[sonias]

5. Get a copy of the triple Ds for your precinct

You can get that from the TX Democratic State party if you're a precinct chair. That's your base too. Oh I also recommend that you can keep track of your Democratic cats once you heard them up, and communicate with them through Precinct Organizer http://www.precinctorganizer.com/. A precinct chair in S/W Austin by the name of Chuck King wrote that handy tool and it's free.

Jim Hightower says that everyone that says you can't heard cats has never used the proper tool - a can opener.


Sonia

[crispini]

7. Hey! What's up with that website!

First I've heard of it. Kinda cool. I just signed up. Are a lot of people using it?

[sonias]

9. crispini it was just developed but we're using it

My precinct chair and I will be. It allows us to keep our volunteers informed. You can plan block walks, send them messages etc. If you want to make sure you get a feel for it, make sure you tell Chuck you're the precinct chair and then get a couple of your hearded cats (ahem I mean precinct organizers) to sign on. They must be in your pct, for it to work for you. Then give it a whirl.

Chuck should give this to TDP to manage, but he says he's willing to do this pro-bono.

Sonia

[GOPisEvil]

8. Those are two good suggestions.

I'll be a much better precinct chair this election cycle. My precinct actually had pretty good turnout, and of course went heavily for all Democrats in 2004, but this is a mid-term.

[acmejack]

6. People were getting burnt out.

They basically had to vote twice in four weeks, too much civic duty to ask some people to put out.

[sonias]

10. You think that's bad, think about the poor folks in HD106

This is the Katy Hubener race in Grand Prairie. Early voting has already begun for that special election race. The election day for the special election race is February 28th. Early voting for the March 7th primary starts on February 21st and it overlaps with the early voting for the special election. So those group of folks have to vote twice, within a three week period. And they have to vote twice for Katy to win both. People are going to be so confused about having to vote for her officially twice, because they are separate elections.

Damn you Rick "MoFo" Perry!!!

Sonia