Straight-ticket Voting Trends in HD114

Jul 27, 2016 | House Race Analyses, Straight-ticket Voting

We continue our exploration of straight-ticket voting trends in competitive or potentially competitive districts by looking at HD114. Most of the district lies in north Dallas between I-635 and Loop 12, including the North Dallas, Preston Hollow and Vickery Meadow neighborhoods and portions of the Lake Highlands and Northwest Dallas neighborhoods.

Rep. Jason Villalba

Rep. Jason
Villalba

Jim Burke

Jim
Burke

As it is drawn today, HD114 remains a friendly place for Republican candidates. Democrats were making progress eroding the Republicans’ advantage, but that forward movement stalled after the 2008 general election.

Rep. Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) is seeking his third term. He is opposed by Jim Burke*, the information technology chair of the Dallas Co. Democratic Party, and Libertarian Anthony Holan. Neither of his opponents has reported any contributions, and they have no cash on hand.

Republican candidates had a 6,000-vote advantage in straight-ticket voting in HD114’s precincts, an increase of more than 1,800 votes over 2008.

Estimates of the number of straight-ticket and full-ballot votes cast in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 presidential elections and the actual number of those votes in the 2012 presidential election in the precincts currently comprising HD114 are shown below.

2000

  • Straight Republican – 24,100 82% 82%
  • Straight Democratic – 13,000 44% 44%
  • Full Ballot – 27,500 94% 94%

Republican Advantage: ~11,100 votes

%

Straight Republican

%

Straight Democratic

2004

  • Straight Republican – 25,100 85% 85%
  • Straight Democratic – 16,300 55% 55%
  • Full Ballot – 27,400 93% 93%

Republican Advantage: ~8,800 votes

%

Straight Republican

%

Straight Democratic

2008

  • Straight Republican – 21,800 74% 74%
  • Straight Democratic – 17,600 60% 60%
  • Full Ballot – 29,400 100% 100%

Republican Advantage: ~4,200 votes

%

Straight Republican

%

Straight Democratic

2012

  • Straight Republican – 22,709 77% 77%
  • Straight Democratic – 16,670 57% 57%
  • Full Ballot – 24,598 84% 84%

Republican Advantage: 6,039 votes

%

Straight Republican

%

Straight Democratic

In 2012, HD114 had the second-lowest rate of straight-ticket voting among Dallas Co. House districts (HD108 was 3% lower.), but it produced the second largest Republican advantage (HD108 had 5,700 more.). In other area Republican-represented districts, Democrats have sustained progress chipping into Republican advantages, but not here. Democrats drew to within 4,200 straight-ticket votes in 2008, but 1K fewer people voted Democratic straight-ticket in 2012 as nearly 1K more people voted Republican straight-ticket.

Burke faced a decidedly uphill climb to begin with. Raising no money during the first six months of 2016 will not make the climb any easier. Based on historic voting trends, the presence of a Libertarian candidate on the ballot will have no consequential impact on the race.

Absent significant resources pouring into Burke’s campaign or some other highly adverse unforeseen event, we do not anticipate revisiting HD114 this cycle.

* We believe this is the Jim Burke who has filed for the seat. We are unable to locate any online presences or other readily available means of confirming the identity of the candidate. We will correct this report and announce on our site if we discover we have pegged the wrong Jim Burke.

Methodology
Because of redistricting and shifts in precinct boundaries over time, we can only estimate straight-ticket voting prior to the last time the district was drawn (2011). We estimated straight-ticket vote totals by applying the current district boundaries backward in time to the precincts as they existed in each general election. The farther back we go, the more estimating is required. We use mapping software to identify which voting precincts lied entirely or partially in the current boundaries of HD107 in each even-year general election. We used precinct-level results from each general election. For each election prior to 2012, we allocated 100%, 75%, 50% or 25% of the votes cast in those precincts to today’s districts based on the approximate geographic area of the precinct within the district. We totaled the resulting precinct- and split precinct-level data to estimate district-wide straight-ticket votes. We rounded to the nearest 100 to avoid appearing too precise in our estimation. For the 2012 and 2014 general elections, we were able to use the current voting precincts within the current districts without the need to allocate votes across split precincts. Because we could use complete precincts, we chose to provide the accurate vote totals. We thank the Texas Legislative Council for providing the shapefile data necessary to conduct this analysis. We obtained precinct-level election results data from county election officials.