What Primary Turnout Means for Redistricting
February 29th, 2008 by Jake Bernstein
We’ve talked a bit about what record turnout in the primary will do for down-ballot races in the general election in November. Now it’s time to speculate on what this could mean for the Big Enchiladas of Texas politics — legislative and congressional redistricting. All the jockeying over who is speaker of the state House and the speculation over the governor’s race, much of that is really about who will control the levers of redistricting in 2011.
Every few days when I return to this subject to write a post on the impact of the primary, the early vote numbers just get more intense. (Btw, last day for early voting is today, Friday, February 29.) Charles Kuffner over at Off the Kuff was kind enough to post a pdf of a memo from Professor Richard Murray. The good professor at the University of Houston looked at turnout in 15 of the biggest counties up until Sunday. He extrapolates from the numbers to conclude that conservatively the early vote for Democrats will be about 1.2 million. He further projects that the final vote in the Democratic primary will be about 2.6 million. This would be more voters in the Democratic primary than the days when Texas was completely Democratic and the primary was the only game in town. Granted the state has grown quite a bit since then, but still…
Now to redistricting. The Legislature will likely take it up in 2011 based on the 2010 Census. But drawing maps and defending them in court also depends on past turnout and showing where the voters are. That was a difficult task for Democrats in recent years because of the anemic Democratic turnout. Obviously, if the Democrats win more seats in November and in 2010, then they can make a more persuasive case that they deserve more seats in redistricting. But the turnout numbers this time around will also show how many potential Democratic voters are out there.
Matt Angle who runs the Lone Star Project is working this hard, focusing in part on North Texas where his old boss Martin Frost lost a seat after Tom DeLay redistricted the area. “The problem in [the redistricting of ] ’91 and ’01 was that there weren’t elections that could demonstrate that a Hispanic could win a congressional district in North Texas,” he says. “It was a legal argument.”
If record numbers of Latinos come out in North Texas and Dallas, and Sheriff Lupe Valdez wins a primary against two African Americans and an Anglo challenger, then there is a convincing case to be made that the area deserves another Hispanic congressional seat. The population numbers warrant it. But until now, the voter behavior didn’t. That could change with this primary.
