Seeing R.E.D.D.

Harris County's Early Voting Ballot Board reconvenes this morning  to verify signatures on overseas and provisional ballots, so as I complete my service there, I'll just pass this one item along for your consumption.

It took a field trip to a trendy New York hotel nearly a year ago — and then a lot of follow- up — to get Republicans up to speed and on the same page about using technology in their Senate campaigns.

Last January, several dozen Republicans gathered in New York City at the Standard High Line hotel in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District at the invitation of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The group included general consultants for most of the competitive Senate campaigns, mail vendors, pollsters, TV buyers, principals at the top Republican digital and data firms, and NRSC leadership and staff.

“We encouraged people to be very blunt with each other, and they were, in a very good way,” Lira said. “I compare it to the family having the argument they’ve been dancing around for years. … They entered the conference with a lot of historic baggage over, 'You’re taking my budget,’ or ‘You’re trying to steal my thing,’ and they left it with a greater sense of how they could work together.”

“It wasn’t a panacea,” Lira added, sensitive to oversimplification. “But I think it was a pivotal event.”

The High Line summit was a table setter, a beginning. It did two things: it cleared away obstacles to greater cooperation among the GOP’s paid consultant class and between them and the NRSC, and it delivered a clear message to them that the NRSC was expecting the consultants to execute digital-savvy campaigns. But Lira, with the backing of NRSC executive director Rob Collins and political director Ward Baker, was going to do more than just ask. He was determined to hold the campaigns accountable.

So Lira assembled a team to do just that. In March, he hired Mindy Finn, a well-respected digital strategist who had worked on multiple presidential campaigns and also as an executive at Twitter’s D.C. offices. Finn’s sole responsibility was to create what she named the R.E.D.D. program, short for Republicans Excelling at Digital and Data.

Somebody forward this to Jeremy Bird, please.

Update: As a matter of record-keeping here, the TexTrib also had a detailed report on Greg Abbott's extensive -- and, I'm sure, expensive -- voter turnout model.

Feeling vindicated

What I've been saying -- and doing -- for a couple of years now seems to be what others are also now saying and doing.  The idea of an independent progressive movement seems to have found purchase.

This piece at Down With Tyranny! -- which has the details of the New York governor's race -- links to this piece at Jacobin and this piece at The Guardian.  Two excerpts from those follow.

-- "Building outside the Democratic Party":

Everything about this election points to widespread dissatisfaction with a rightward-moving Democratic Party. Democratic voters stayed home. The turnout was a record low in New York State, with Cuomo receiving nearly a million fewer votes than he did in 2010. The Working Families Party (WFP) deployed all their resources to maintain their ballot line, but their campaign literature didn’t mention their candidate for governor: Cuomo. Only the Green Party significantly increased their vote.

Our gubernatorial candidate, Howie Hawkins, got 5 percent and 175,000 votes — nearly triple the number that voted for him in 2010 and quadruple the percentage. Instead of just voting against the Republicans or for a lesser evil, countless people expressed glee at the prospect of voting for someone running on a progressive platform.

Could only happen in in New York, you say?  Happened in California also, where 23 Greens won election across that big blue state, bringing their numbers to 64.

Could only happen in New York and California, you say?  A Texas Green candidate earned 10% in a statewide race for the first time in as long as anyone can remember.  A Texas Green in a contested statewide race with a strong Democratic candidate got 2% of the vote, at least twice as much as the historical average.

-- "America just took a wrong turn. It's time to take a hard left":

(T)here were real victories this week for progressive alternatives on clean energy, economic security and social justice. The extremist blood bath may have painted the country more red, but there were more than a few important – and extremely promising – tea leaves of green. It was even enough to suggest a new, independent, hard-left turn in American politics is still very much possible.

Fracking bans just passed in cities from California to Ohio and even in Denton, Texas – the town at the heart of America’s oil-and-gas boom. In Richmond, California, progressives beat back a multi-million dollar campaign funded by Chevron to defeat Green and allied candidates. Voters in Alaska, Oregon and Washington DC joined Washington State and Colorado in legalizing marijuana, adding to the growing momentum to call off the failed “war on drugs” that has given the US the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Still not buying it?  Would you open your mind a little about it if you read it in the Waco Tribune?

McLennan Community College professor Ashley Cruseturner astutely observed in a recent Tribune-Herald article that one-party rule allows the party faithful to dictate outcomes: “You have this situation where 5 percent of Texas is picking a statewide candidate for the whole state. Whoever is the most motivated in the spring, who can get this tiny group moving, that’s a lot of power.”

It is a lot of power, and concentrated power is not a good thing in a democracy. The results are predictable; we all find it hard not to reward our friends if it is within our power to do so.

(Notice that the author didn't mention the Green Party there.)  What else is being said about this strange phenomenon of the Democratic Party being abandoned by those who voted and those who did not?

-- "Why the Democrats lost... if they really did":

American voters — the ones that bothered to turn out for the elections — made a few things pretty clear. They’re tired of the party infighting. They’re tired of Democrat and Republican extremes. They’re tired of being held hostage by politicians who aren’t actually representing their wants and needs. The odd combination of Democratic policies and Republican politicians that were approved in this last election shows that Americans aren’t defined by two parties and the ideals encompassed by those parties. They are not black or white, but shades of grey, and need to be represented as such. Was it the Democrats who lost? Or the American people speaking in the limited voice allowed them by a two party system? It seems as though the populace of the United States is tired of party rhetoric, and is seeking a middle ground. It may be that the time is ripe to introduce a third party, one that is interested in representing the people, not collecting political gains like so many trophies.

-- And here's your argument for working within the Democratic Party to affect progressive change, from Bonddad.  "The importance of state-level third parties":

As spelled out above, corporatists are thoroughly in charge of the democratic establishment, to the point, it is widely reported, that they would prefer GOP election wins over progressive democratic candidates. See, for example, here.

So, how to make corporatist democrats extinct?  By showing them that they can never win.  And how do you show them that they will never win?  By borrowing a page from the career of Joe Lieberman.

It isn't enough for progressives to primary corporatists. State level third parties, like New York's Green Party, give progressives the ability to stay in elections right through the general election, even if they lose a democratic primary to corporatists.

Yes, this strategy will mean some general election losses over a few cycles.  But when corporatist democrats learn that they cannot win, they will start to disappear.  Progressives will win either as Democrats, or under another party banner.

By the way, this happened before. One hundred years ago, there were active Populist and Progressive Parties in the states (remember Robert LaFollette?). Ultimately they became part of the winning New Deal coalition.

Progressives shouldn't abandon the Democratic Party.  But they should target the corporatists as mercilessly as Tea Party republicans targeted their less-extremist wing, and state level Third Parties are an indispensable part of that attack.

-- And there's still room in my brain for this, which disagrees that reforming the Democratic Party is the best way to go.

If progressives can learn one thing from the 2014 election cycle, it is that they no longer have a place in the Democratic Party.

With Republicans on the offensive, Democratic incumbents and hopefuls spent the entire election running away from anything perceived to be associated with President Obama. In effect, this created numerous Democratic campaigns that ran to the right of a president that was already on a long-standing drift to the right of his own. This is in contrast to the normal state of affairs, which is where Democrats campaign on ideas that appeal to the progressive base and then do not deliver when elected.

This set of events left progressives and even many liberals without the party that they would normally identify with and vote for. The result was a sweeping defeat for Democrats in the congressional and gubernatorial elections, losing their Senate majority in the process.

Warning: a full reading of these links will be extraordinarily provocative for those on the left still trying to make some sense of last week's wipeout.  (Was it just a week ago that some Democrats were feeling hopeful about the end of the day's results?  I confess I had given up some time before early voting concluded; just didn't want to be Debbie Downer to my hard-working friends and neighbors.)

It's definitely going to challenge your thinking about the kind of Democrat you should support in 2016, in 2018, etc.

And that needs to happen.  Either the Democratic Party nationally -- and the Texas Democratic Party as well -- can get its shit together, or it's further on down the road to perdition.   I still like the idea of tempting them with my vote and support in exchange for nominating the right left kind of candidates.  But if they can't manage that then I can easily go Green.

Sure hope I see more discussions on this topic in the future.

Update: In case anybody might wonder, I wouldn't follow David Alameel to the nearest liquor store, much less any revolution he thinks he's going to lead.  You do have to like how he throws Gilberto Hinojosa, et. al. under the bus, though.  That signals some fun times ahead for the TDP.

The Chill Down Wrangle

Our red nation is going to turn a little blue this week, but only because of the Alaskan polar vortex (or whatever they're calling the first cold front of the season).  The Texas Progressive Alliance reminds you to find your gloves and scarves for later in the week as it brings you the best of what's left of Texas post-election.

As the Fifth Circuit gets set to hear arguments over Texas' ban on same sex marriage, Off the Kuff reminds us that public opinion is much more favorable towards same sex marriage in Texas now.

Libby Shaw, writing for Daily Kos and Texas Kaos, believes that although this election was lost almost before it began, capitulation is not an option: We Lost the Election but We Are Not Giving Up.

The first beatings in the Republican takeover in Harris County were administered at their election night watch party, as the media that dared to speak during a prayer experienced first-hand the love of Christ and his believers. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs wonders if assaulting a reporter on camera, physically or verbally, is really what Jesus would do.

Despite the ugly results from last Tuesday, CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme refuses to be discouraged. We learn from our mistakes. PS: The Valley went for Davis.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson reminds us that fewer than 30% of eligible voters turned out to vote in the 2014 mid-terms in Texas. Needless to say, 2014 turnout was horrible.

Texpatriate bemoans the fact that Texas will never turn blue.

Neil at All People Have Value has a news flash: if Democrats want to change their political fortunes, then their policies have to offer a ray of hope for the working class.

Texas Leftist noted that minimum wage initiatives elsewhere in the United States won approval. Might Texas be next?

Dos Centavos also points out that in Texas, Latinos just didn't vote.

In environmental developments, Bluedaze reports on the aftermath of the landslide win for the fracking ban in Denton, and Texas Vox wants to be sure everybody understands the difference between better air and still-bad air.

================

Other blog posts from around the state...

Lone Star Q observes that Westboro Baptist Church is wading into the HERO fight against the Houston pastors.

nonsequiteuse passes along a few suggestions on what might come next.

Socratic Gadfly thinks that the Democrats' Obama problem in 2014 was akin to their Clinton problem in 2000.

Hair Balls informs us that the Fifth Circuit wasn't always a judicial wingnut backwater.

John Wright updates us on Connie Wilson's efforts to get a drivers license that properly uses her wife's surname.

The Lunch Tray divines what the elections mean for school food.

Prairie Weather thinks we ought to just go ahead and let the GOP impeach Obama, since his economic numbers are so bad anyway.

And finally, Carol Morgan says that while the voters may have spoken, what they said makes no sense at all.

Sunday Funnies

Packets of catchup

More tea-leaf reading on the weekend ahead.

-- Caption, please:

Mine: "Do what now?"

-- More 'duh'.

White voters of all ages were less likely to back Democrats this year than in elections past, helping Republicans nationwide but most acutely in the South — and overpowering Democratic efforts to turn out their core supporters among blacks and Hispanics.

In a nation growing ever more diverse, political forecasters repeatedly warn Republicans they must improve their appeal among minorities in order to remain competitive in the long term.

But for the Democrats, dominating the vote among minorities isn't enough to win elections today — and it won't be in the future if the GOP is able to run up similar margins among whites, who still make up a majority of voters in every state.

"The rule of thumb was Democrats could win with 90 percent of the African-American vote and 40 percent of the white vote," said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

"But now very few Democrats could think about getting 40 percent of the white vote. They're trying to get 30 percent. In the Deep South states, from South Carolina to Louisiana, it's very hard for the Democratic candidate to get 25 percent of the white vote."

-- Here is the best explainer for the current political climate in the USA.

In 2004, Republicans won big, and Democrats were left trying to figure out what went wrong.

Then in 2006, Democrats won big, and they decided everything was fine. Republicans merely shrugged it off as the 6-year-itch that bedevils parties that hold the White House in a president's last midterm.

2006 was a wipeout for Texas Democrats, kos.  Let's forget it, he's rolling.

2008, Democrats won big again, and Republicans were left fumbling for excuses, but mainly decided it was Bush's fault and an artifact of Barack Obama's historic campaign.

In 2010, Republicans won big, so they were validated. All was fine! Democrats were left fumbling.

In 2012, Democrats won big, so they decided everything was fine. Demographics and data to the rescue! Republicans decided to rebrand, until they decided fuck that, no rebranding was needed.

And now in 2014, Republicans are validated again in the Democrats' own 6-year-itch election. Democrats are scrambling for answers.

And I'll tell you what the future looks like:

In 2016, Democrats will win big on the strength of presidential-year turnout. Republicans will realize they really have a shit time winning presidential elections, and maybe they should do something about that!

In 2018, Republicans will win on the strength of off-year Democratic base apathy, and they'll decide everything is okay after all. And it's going to be brutal, because those are the governorships we need for 2020 redistricting. Republicans will then lock up the House for another decade.

Then in 2020, Democrats will win on presidential year turnout, and  ... you get the point.

So in short, we have two separate Americas voting every two years. We have one that is more representative, that includes about 60 percent of voting age adults. Then we have one where we can barely get a third of voting age adults to turn out, and is much whiter and older than the country. And Democrats can win easily with the one, and Republicans can win easily with the other.

And that cycle won't be broken until 1) the Democrats figure out how to inspire their voters to the polls on off years, or 2) Republicans figure out how to appeal to the nation's changing electorate.

And given that each party is validated every two years after a blowout loss, the odds of either happening anytime soon? Bleak.

-- And the best thing about red waves is that we don't have to listen to any whining about voter "fraud" from the King Street Patriots and True the Vote.  We'll take our little blessings where we can find them.  I'm pretty certain that will only be a two-year reprieve.

Latinos aren't going to rescue Texas Democrats

Local attorney Mark Yzaguirre.

Various observers will address particular points and provide certain suggestions, but let me focus anyone reading this piece on one figure: 40 percent. That number is the percentage of the Latino vote in Texas that I previously suggested is necessary for the Republican Party to maintain a strong working majority of the general election vote in Texas.

So what percentage of the Latino vote did Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott get in his victory over the Democratic nominee, State Senator Wendy Davis? Forty-four percent, according to exit polling from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. If one breaks those numbers down by gender, 50 percent of Latino men and 39 percent of Latina women voted for Abbott. While African-American voters in Texas went 92 percent in favor of Davis, 73 percent of non-Latino white voters supported Abbott. Other exit polling largely matches the UT-Austin numbers. That combination of Anglo and Latino voters gave Abbott the landslide victory he achieved on Election Day. 

Well, he just put Marc Campos out of business.

The results of the 2014 elections vindicate that position. Democrats who think that the Latino vote is a lock for the Democratic Party need to be disabused of that false assumption immediately. The numbers cited above show that. Also, if one looks at county-by-county data, Greg Abbott was able to get strong pluralities in many of the generally pro-Democratic Latino counties of South Texas.

[...]

This election shows that the Republican Party in Texas is quite capable of making a play for a solid portion of the Texas Latino vote. If Democrats want to have any hope of changing the dynamics of statewide politics in Texas, they need to lose their illusions about a coming tide of Latino voters who will save them. They need to work to expand their lead among Latino voters and find a way to bring in a decent percentage of current non-Latino GOP voters into the fold. If they fail to do both, their wait for a demographic transformation will be a very long one that may never end.

Yeah, some good solid soul-searching is in order for Team Blue.  A little existential angst never killed anybody (who was able to pull themselves back from the edge, anyway).  That would be a good place, in fact, to start... once all the hand-wringing and crying and finger-pointing and backbiting work their way out of everybody's system.

Updates: More here.  And Stace with with more and better.

Harris County results: seeing red

Disillusionment abounded on Election Night locally, as the blue slate came up short everywhere.  It began and ended with straight ticket voting, which the Republicans led in mailed ballots by a 54-46 margin, padded with a 56-44 win in early voting, and closed out on Election Day at 53-46.  The one percent remaining went to local Greens and Libertarians.  That averaged out to 54-45-1, or a 44,000-vote countywide bonus for the Reds over the Blues.

Most of the political advertising that arrived in my mailbox this cycle was from First Tuesday, a PAC controlled by Houston attorney Dave Mattheisen.  Mattheisen has long been the county's liberal kingmaker; he recruited and screened prospective judicial candidates for Gerry Birnberg, the HCDP chair before Lane Lewis.  I received by my count five large card mailers from them, the last of which arrived at end of EV and looked like this:

Here's a picture of all the mail I got from First Tuesday (left and across the top), the HGLBT PAC, the Houston Stonewall Young Democrats and HCDP (the three at the bottom), and the Texas Association of Realtors advocating a 'yes' on Prop. 1 (the three middle right).  I also got a card from John Culberson (fuck you, asshole) and from Borris Miles, my state representative.

Maybe you can see that the partisan pieces are almost all promoting a straight-ticket Democratic ballot vote. I said more than my piece on the wisdom of this.  Further, the First Tuesday cards were aimed squarely at women voters, which we now know were lost to Abbott.

You might feel a little down, but I doubt you feel as sick to your stomach as Dave Mattheisen.

On to the county results.

-- John Cornyn carried Harris County 54-45, the same as the straight ticket vote.  Greg Abbott beat Wendy Davis by a 51-47 margin, it was Patrick over Van de Putte by 50-47, Paxton 52-46,  Hegar over Collier 51-46, Pee Bush 54-43 over John Cook, and Sid Miller over Jim Hogan 53-44.  Ryan Sitton got ahead of Steve Brown 52.5 -43.7 and  the statewide judicials were divided in a similar 53-44 pattern, plus or minus one or less than one.  The remaining 2-3% in statewide races was split between the Gs and the Ls.

At the Harris County courthouses, the story was the same.  The lone Democrat on the 14th Court of Appeals, Jim Sharp, lost 57-43 in the district and lost Harris County by nearly the same spread as the straight ticket votes, 54-46.  Kyle Carter, the challenger to Chief Justice Kem Frost, lost by almost exactly the same margins.  Click here and go to page 17 if you like.  Some judge candidates closed it to 53-47.

In the county's marquee tilt, District Attorney Devon Anderson defeated Democratic challenger Kim Ogg 53-47, so it's clear that only a small number of Republicans crossed over.  Thanks anyway, Big Jolly.  The lone challenger left standing to county judge Ed Emmett, Green David Collins, got over 80,000 votes and almost 17% of the total vote.  There were 200K undervotes in that race, ten times as many as there were in the DA contest.  A Libertarian, Brad Miller, got 4% of the vote in the County Criminal Court #10 race, won by the Republican D. J. Spjut  52-44 over Democrat George Barnstone, who organized the Final Friday events locally.  And a Green, Clint Davidson, got 2% of the vote in CCC #13, which was won by R Don Smyth over D Jason Luong, 54-44.

And Clerk Stan Stanart got another four years to figure out how to do his job.  The numbers were 54.3- 45.7 over Ann Harris Bennett.  Seeing a trend yet?

Proposition 1, taking money out of the RDF to give to TxDOT to fix some of our roads, carried Harris County by almost precisely the same 4-1 margin as it did the state.  I voted against.

Still some national Congressional races, the Texas statehouse, and a few ballot initiatives that had a progressive slant to them coming.

The early take on turnout

Harris County results and analysis forthcoming.  First a word on electorate participation.

I thought the efforts made by the BGTX in Harris County and the rest of the state -- in conjunction and sometimes in conflict with the infrastructure provided by the HCDP and chair Lane Lewis, his lieutenant Chris Young, the myriad of volunteer workers in both organizations who walked blocks and made phone calls in the weeks and even months leading up to November 4 -- were substantial and a significant improvement over years past.  I thought that because I participated in them, saw the hard work being done, and even did a little of it myself.

But the results simply don't support the premise that they -- we -- made a difference in the historical record.  We may have made a difference if we could compare the results we got to results we would have gotten if no effort had been expended, or if the efforts we made were short-circuited as they have been in the recent past.  But we cannot, of course, do that.

We could blame some of it on photo ID legislation, or even the evisceration of the VRA by the SCOTUS.  But we don't know how much that might have affected turnout because essentially all we have is anecdotal data.  That's why the litigation rests upon interpretation of the law's effects by either a liberal judge ("harsh undue burden") or a conservative one ("personal responsibility").  From the beginning of this year, I blogged repeatedly that Democrats should not wait for the courts to come to their rescue in this regard; that they should actively assist new as well as old voters with the documentation to get themselves legal.  We won't know for awhile, and may never know for certain, if that was an effort which fell short and actually dented turnout.

I do not think that Dave Mann of the Texas Observer has an accurate premise here, either.

Update: Socratic Gadfly disagrees.  He and I rarely do.

What is accurate to say is that Democrats stayed home in droves across the United States, and more so in Texas and certainly in Harris County.  But as it turns out and as Charles is alluding, so did Republicans.  So my own premise -- still in need of some empirical support itself -- is that Houstonians and Texans and Americans are becoming less and less engaged in the electoral process for any variety of reasons.  Declining voter turnout is the only evidence I have beyond anecdotal at this time.

It's remarkable to me that so many Texans -- such a huge number of Americans -- just simply don't care about elections, candidates, issues, and so on.  And I don't have any suggestions to address this seemingly widespread apathy any more than anybody else does.  Having written that, I have some better understanding -- acquired during this cycle -- about those liberals and progressives who have quit on the process and given up on the system.  And that leads me to posit that a much larger group of people, thinking less about matters of the public interest than the rest of us, are similarly tuned out.  But theirs seems more out of disinterest than it does hostility.

Just an early observation.  Going to have to think about it some more before I know what to think about it.

Women problems for Democrats

Before we get back to dissecting election results, let's take note of the first kernel of wisdom emerging from the early analysis of the dismal Democratic results; women bailed on them.  And not just in Texas.

Democrats hoped women voters would help them weather a tough election year, but weariness with President Barack Obama and disgust with relentless partisan warfare in Washington prompted many to abandon the party they had backed two years earlier.

[...]

Female voters expressed disgust with both parties, but on Election Day it was the Democrats who suffered most. They needed to win the women's vote by a wide margin in order to offset Republicans' huge advantage among white men.

In the end, Democrats won women by 5 percentage points over Republicans, according to exit polls -- far short of the double-digit margins they have racked up in more successful years.

Democrats lost women voters even in states like Colorado, where they ran a relentless campaign accusing Republicans of threatening access to abortion and birth control. Voters tossed out Democratic Senator Mark Udall even as they rejected an anti-abortion ballot initiative.

Many of the dozen women interviewed by Reuters in battleground states said while they supported abortion rights, they were more concerned by what they described as faltering leadership in the White House and a tendency by candidates from both parties to focus on negative attacks rather than explain what they wanted to achieve.

"I can't vote for people who allow such negativity, because it doesn't say much for their characters. They're being politicians -- they're not being the kind of leader I want," said Maxine Schein, 69, a lifelong Democrat who this year voted for a third-party candidate.

That's Team Blue's first wake up call.   Here's the snooze going off again.  You should read from the beginning for context that includes the struggles to raise the minimum wage (many women), address pay inequality (mostly women), and defend assaults against reproductive freedom (all women).  There's also been the discussions around sexism and violence epitomized by this year's hashtag #YesAllWomen -- it has a Wiki if you fellas were out to lunch-- as well as the domestic abuse cases among NFL players Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson that captured the nation's attention, and the glaring exposure given to the rape culture on college campuses.

Now then...

There is a strong desire to see society no longer dominated by old, wealthy white men which gives the idea of a woman president great appeal. Unfortunately, it is Hillary Clinton, as of now, who is the most likely female candidate in 2016.

Hillary Clinton has been entrenched in corporate politics for decades with ties to the largest corporations in the world including Boeing, Goldman Sachs and Walmart. She’s part of the corporate club – not a tool to end their agenda. Any real fight for women’s equality will come up against the resistance of corporate America, which will not accept changes that affect their bottom line. This is why we need to build a mass women’s movement independent of both corporate parties linked to a new political force representing the interests of the 99% against the 1%.

The Democrats want women to believe that the way to defend their rights is to vote for them. It is certainly true that right-wing Republicans have been the main force attacking women’s rights in recent times. Yet the Democrats have singularly failed to stop these vicious attacks.

You don't have to buy what follows: the author's suggestion that a genuine socialist movement is the best response.  I think there's enough opportunity for Greens and even some progressive Democrats to take the initiative and run with it.

Jill Stein was certainly that person in 2012.  Elizabeth Warren could be that person in 2016, but probably won't be.  The real question is: what woman will?  I don't think a man can sell this.

Anyway, I suspect there'll be much more to blog about on this topic over the next few years.

Update: At least here in Texas it should be noted, in context and in clarification, that "women" is meant to refer to "white women".

I went to the Texas Tribune first for a dissection of the election results, and one piece of information struck me as particularly… wrong. The Tribune cited CNN exit polls to illustrate the landslide, saying Abbott “beat Davis by lopsided margins with white voters (72-27), men (65-34) and women (52-47). Davis beat Abbott among Latinos (57-42) and African-Americans (93-7).” Last time I checked, though, there were thousands upon thousands of women in Texas considered Latina and African-American — what about their votes?

As RH Reality Check’s Andrea Grimes reports, their votes were solidly in Davis’ favor: 94 percent of black women and 61 percent of Latinas voted for her. Only 32 percent of white women did. That’s certainly not enough women to say that Abbott won the whole gender (though that’s a ludicrous statement in the first place).

The SCOTX and CCA results

The state's highest courts also got a case of the crimson tide effect from yesterday.

Let's note before we look at those numbers, all of which are courtesy of the Texas Secretary of State's office, that the highest recorded percentage of the state's 14 million-plus registered voters participated in the race for governor, at 33.57%.  Texas has a 2013 population by the US Census of 26.45 million, and was projected in July of this year to be a smidge over 27 million.  But not all of those folks are of voting age, nor are able to vote because of citizenship status and other reasons.  The number of eligible voters in Texas -- what is called in demographer's parlance CVAP or citizen voting age population -- was estimated to be (thanks to Michael Li) 15.583 million in 2011, with a projected increase of about 700K per year (687K in 2011, up to 747K in 2014).

Or about 17.68 million, give or take.  Here's a table to start with if you want to check my math.

With all that in mind, when I have frequently said here that about half of Texas residents are not registered to vote, and about half of those registered do not bother to cast a ballot, you know where I'm coming from.  This quick and dirty method is a little generous to non-voting Texans in 2014; as Greg Abbott's high-water mark tells us, only a third of the state's registered voters, or  4.7 million, voted in the governor's race and he earned 2.784 million (or 59.25%) of those.  Update: Ted with more on this.

Another way to put it: a little over two and three-quarter million Texans -- or about the population of Houston and a few of its surrounding incorporated areas like Bellaire, Pasadena, The Woodlands, Sugar Land, Katy, Baytown, Galveston, and so on -- voted for Greg Abbott for governor... which is about 10% of the population of the state.  He'll still consider that a mandate to do whatever he likes (not that anything was holding him back before, of course).

Now then, on to the TSC and CCA races.

-- Hecht (R) 59.6, Moody (D) 37.3, Oxford (L) 3.05%.  This is the virtual baseline for statewide Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians up and down the ballot.  Compare these percentages to the statewide results in the previous post as well; you'll find the deviations are only a point or two at most.

-- Brown 60.3 (R), Meyers (D) 36.5, Ash (L) 3.18%.

-- Boyd (R) 58.9, Benavides (D) 37.6, Fulton (L) 2.75, Waterbury (G) .74%.

Next is a Supreme Court race that had no Democratic candidate on the ballot but did have a Green one.  Leaving a statewide contest unchallenged by the blue team is the primary reason why Texas Greens are able to secure ballot access for the next election cycle.

-- Johnson (R)78.8, Koelsch (L) 11.95, Chisholm (G) 9.24%.

Democratic ticket-splitters appear to have gravitated to all three remaining parties on the ballot.  Phil Johnson received the highest number of votes of any Republican on the ballot -- more than John Cornyn, over a hundred thousand more than George P. Bush (who topped Greg Abbott by 30K).

Libertarian Goelsch, with 444,000-plus votes, got almost seven times the number of votes that Kathie Glass got.  When it comes to hotly-contested governor's races, Libertarians get scared and return to the GOP.  And Jim Chisholm's 391,00 votes was just the second-largest for Greens in the state.

What this race demonstrates is that Democrats first vote for Republicans, and then they vote for Libertarians and Greens in nearly equal measure when there's no D.  Another piece of evidence that refutes the tired myth that Greens somehow cause Democrats to lose.  And that's when Dems don't skip the race altogether (the undervotes in this contest, from the one directly above it, jumped to over 6% of the state's 14 million registered voters).

Democrats cause Democrats to lose.  But we knew that already from abysmal turnout.

-- Richardson (R) 59.8, Granberg (D) 36.57, Bennett (L) 2.93%.  With no Green in the race, we're back to a familiar pattern of vote distribution.

The two Court of Criminal Appeals races had a Republican defeating a Libertarian and a Green.  You'll notice the previous trend.

-- Yeary (R) 76.27, Parker (L) 13.25, Sanders-Castro (G) 10.47%.

Quanah Parker and Judith Sanders-Castro both benefited from their names and achieved the highest votes totals in Texas for Libertarian and Green Party candidates respectively.

-- Newell (R) 78.26, Strange III 13.16, Altgelt 8.57%.

This is the pattern as we have seen above.

More analysis of Harris County results tomorrow morning, followed by the Senate and gubernatorial races elsewhere across the country tomorrow afternoon or evening.

The red tide rolls in

And as Bill O'Reilly observed, goes out again.  We can't explain that (but that won't stop us from trying).  From the top of my ballot....

-- Cornyn 62, Alameel 34, Libertarian Paddock almost 3, Green "Spicybrown" Sanchez, 1.17%.  The historical Texas election trends hold except for Alameel, who was a few points points weaker than the upper part of the Democratic statewide slate.  Does anyone want to see this man carry the banner again in 2016 2018 against Ted Cruz, as he has forewarned us?  For all the purported danger Cornyn was supposed to be in from a primary challenger like David Barton or Steve Stockman, the freaks all came back home to him.  He stands on the cusp of leading the Senate's new majority caucus... if Cruz lets him.

-- Culberson 63, Cargas 34.5, Lib 2%.  I'm just disappointed that Cargas hit the over in my personal handicapping (I had him at 33, which is where he was most of the night) of his second defeat at the hands of Cumbersome.  I'm not going to be voting for any oil and gas attorneys running for anything any more, ever.

-- Abbott 59, Davis 39, Glass 1.40, Parmer .39%.  Everybody underperformed expectations... except Abbott and Parmer.  The worst and latest poll had Davis losing by 16.  There will be recriminations aplenty, but I for one won't be piling on BGTX.  I do not know what the value of their efforts were in terms of raw votes or percentages, but anybody who throws rocks at their Aegean-stables cleaning efforts needs to sit down and shut up.  Frankly the only thing that has motivated a groundswell of Democratic support in Texas in my lifetime  is when there is a tightly-contested presidential primary between an establishment, conservative candidate and a (perceived, at least) left-leaning, agent-of-change challenger.  Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders: pick up the white paging telephone please.

-- Patrick 58, Van de Putte 39, Butler 2.55, Courtney .59%.  LVDP clocked in with about 22,000 fewer votes than Davis in statewide returns that are 98.77% complete at this posting.  That should put to rest any arguments that she would have fared better at the top of the ticket.  This article suggests that either the Latino Decisions poll released on Election Day was off... or that Patrick received some massive amount of the "non-Latino" vote.  I think it's both of those.

As his first agenda item upon the inauguration of his term as Your Lieutenant Governor, Patrick will issue a fatwa declaring that all Texas women will wear burqas for the next two years.  And that's going to be as liberal as it gets, ladies.  I cannot wait to see if he carried the female vote in some equivalent number to Abbott (52-47 by the exit polls).  That's a statement that will be repeated often, you can be certain.  Update: CNN's exit polling says it was a nine-point margin.

-- Paxton 59, Houston 38, Balagia 2.53, Osborne .63%.  Paxton's pending legal issues dissuaded no Republicans from voting for him.  The GOP vote is as monolithic as can be imagined.

-- Hegar 58, Collier 37.67, Sanders 2.67, Shafto .97%.  The first statewide contest that showed some slight erosion away from the two major party candidates.  Libertarian Ben Sanders had the second-highest showing for the Libs in both vote total and percentage; he got twice as many votes as Kathie Glass, the now-two-time Libertarian gubernatorial loser.  Deb Shafto increased her numbers about 15K and half of a percent from the baseline of candidates preceding her on the ballot, largely I think on the basis of her being the Green gubernatorial candidate in 2010.

-- Bush 60.7, Cook 35.3, Knight 2.71, Alessi 1.28%.  George Pee got more votes than Greg Abbott, folks.  And the Green candidate, Valerie Alessi, slightly over-performed ticketmates above her, but not those below, as we will see again in a moment.

-- Miller 58.6, Hogan 36.8, Palmquist 2.87, Kendrick 1.68%.  It's disappointing that my man Kenneth did not see the surge of support I envisioned.  This is the cause and effect of straight ticket voting demonstrated in all its appalling ignorance.  Jim Hogan should not have received a single vote, period.  It's difficult to encourage Democrats to vote when they make choices this poor when they do.

-- Sitton 58, Brown 36.5, Miller, 3.15, Salinas 2%.  The Green, Martina Salinas, benefited from her Latino surname as much as a vigorous campaign, the highest-profile one of all Greens.  She got nearly 93,000 votes, the largest amount of any G in a contested (with a Democrat) race.  Maybe there are a few Texans who like the idea of a committed environmentalist sitting on the board of commissioners that regulate the oil and gas industry in Texas.  Steve Brown, the only African American on the statewide ballot for Democrats, fell short of Jim Hogan's tally despite running an all-out campaign.  And Mark Miller scored almost the highest of any statewide Libertarian in a contested race.

These lower-ballot statewide tilts seem to offer the greatest opportunity for the minor parties to make an impact.  We'll watch and see if they take this lesson to heart for the future.

Back today with a post about statewide judicial races and turnout.

Yeah, the polls were skewed.

Just in the other direction.  Update: Nate Silver, via TPM.

"Based on results as reported through early Wednesday morning — I’ll detail our method for calculating this in a moment — the average Senate poll conducted in the final three weeks of this year’s campaign overestimated the Democrat’s performance by 4 percentage points," Silver wrote at Five Thirty Eight. "The average gubernatorial poll was just as bad, also overestimating the Democrat’s performance by 4 points."

In almost every key Senate race -- Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Alaska -- the pre-election polls favored Democrats. The trend led to a shocked cadre of political observers as Virginia Sen. Mark Warner (D) barely eked out a win in a race that most had written off as an easy hold for Democrats because of the polling.

"Interestingly, this year’s polls were not especially inaccurate. Between gubernatorial and Senate races, the average poll missed the final result by an average of about 5 percentage points — well in line with the recent average," Silver concluded. "The problem is that almost all of the misses were in the same direction.

Texas Democrats couldn't blame it on the rain, either.  It was a much better set of returns than Republicans could have hoped for in their wettest of dreams.  They will believe that it was, you know, ordained.  A gift from God.

It's worse than 2014, particularly here in Harris County, where all the Ds got swept out to sea.  And it's no consolation that it was just as bad in North Carolina, or Georgia, or Wisconsin, or Florida, or...

The best news I can find is that Denton passed their fracking ban.  So there's that.  And there's this, under a teaser subhead that reads: "Patrick supporters get angry with reporters".

"You are being disrespectful!", she's screeching, when the cameras cut to their talking heads just as Ed Young of Second Baptist Church began his prayer for Dan Patrick (currently photos numbered 36 and 37 in the Chron's slideshow).

Update (11/6): Isiah Carey has more and more pictures. And Juanita Jean has a screenshot from Carey's Facebook page with a photo of longtime ABC-13 reporter Deborah Wrigley intervening in the confrontation above.

Comparisons to tsunami survivors, the latest Borg assimilees, and drowning victims aside, the expected gloating has turned into taunting in a few of the usual places.  Doncha hate a poor winner?

Go ahead and tear down the goalposts, start a white riot, burn a few autos and ransack some light retail outlets, Republicans.  The cops don't haul out the tanks and the tear gas when it's white folks.  Nobody's going to shoot you no matter how badly you misbehave.  Here are a few questions for when you finish your bullying and your tantrums; we'll wait.

-- What time do the lynchings begin?  Not the one of Mitch McConnell by Ted Cruz.  I'm asking about the crucifixions of the women who have abortions, of the gays, and the other sinners and non-believers.

Or will they be stonings instead?  Wood timbers cost money, I know.

-- We'll forget about marijuana decriminalization in Texas.  Can we still listen to rock and roll music, or will that lead to dancing and fornication?

-- Should women go ahead and begin registering their reproductive parts for confiscation by the government?  You know, like you constantly complain about your guns and Obama?  "Greg Abbott's gonna git yer koochies" just doesn't have the same ring to it.  Fear simply does not motivate Democrats in the same way that it does Republicans.  For their sake, I hope they can someday find something that will.

-- When do you start replacing "Obama" with "Hillary" and "Clinton"?  Misogyny worked pretty well for you in this election; is it as easy to shift gears into that from overt racial hostility?  Serious question, but I think I already know the answer.

Oh well, we'll try to have some fun and snark as we continue the slow slide to theocratic fascism in Texas.  Coming soon to your state too, non-Texans, so don't consider yourselves safe in Delaware or Connecticut or even Massachusetts, and correspondingly smug as a result.  Your problems are Blue Dogs and neoliberals, which suggests a thorough housecleaning is in order.

Some numbers and appropriate comment about them later.