Straight-ticket Vote and Swing Vote in Cruz/O'Rourke Contest for the US Senate in 2018

In preparing a report for ACC's Center for Public Policy & Political Studies, I found an interesting relationship between the straight-ticket vote and the swing vote (non-straight-ticket vote) in the contest between incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Beto O'Rourke. In the seven counties that cast slightly more than one-half of the total vote in Texas, here is the relationship between the straight-ticket vote and swing vote in each county for each candidate.



Although the correlation between the straight-ticket vote and swing vote is not perfectly correlated, the Pearson for Cruz is .854 and for O'Rourke is .874.

It is fairly obvious that in these counties, both candidates did well in drawing the straight-ticket vote and the swing vote in the counties that they won.

Here are the results for each of the counties in the graphs:




Candidate



County



% STV



% Swing
Cruz Harris 44.0% 32.05%
Dallas 34.7% 29.63%
Tarrant 53.8% 39.38%
Bexar 40.9% 38.11%
Travis 27.1% 20.61%
Collin 58.2% 41.65%
Denton  61.7% 37.47%
O'Rourke Harris 55.3% 66.97%
Dallas 64.7% 69.35%
Tarrant 45.6% 59.44%
Bexar 58.3% 61.89%
Travis 71.8% 78.37%
Collin 41.3% 56.90%
Denton  37.6% 61.39%
Pearson Coefficient CRUZ O'Rourke
0.854109 0.873526

And the Table showing the result in each county:

County
GOP STV
Cruz SV
Winner
Harris Lost Lost O'Rouke
Dallas Lost Lost O'Rouke
Tarrant Won Lost O'Rouke
Bexar Lost Lost O'Rouke
Travis Lost Lost O'Rouke
Collin Won Lost Cruz
Denton  Won Lost Cruz

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