Obama won national election, but Richardson chose McCain

by Andrew Laska of Richardson Echo

It has been a month now since the U.S. Presidential election was won by Barack Obama. Who did Richardson favor in 2008? We look at a precinct-by-precinct breakdown in Richardson and we look at party trends across Richardson since the 2000 presidential election.

In the national election Barack Obama defeated John McCain by a margin of 52.9% to 45.7% of the popular vote. In Richardson, despite surges in early voting which many pundits said favored the Democrats, voters chose John McCain over Barack Obama by a margin of 56.5% to 42.0% of the vote. That is close to opposite of Dallas County as a whole, which voted for Obama over McCain by a margin of 57.2% to 41.9%. In Richardson, McCain received 16995 votes while Obama received 12639 votes.

As we noted in an earlier article early voting surged in Richardson. However the totals did not show a large voter increase when compared to the 2004 presidential election. In 2008, Richardson voters recorded a total of 30090 votes for presidential candidates and in 2004 they recorded 29589 votes for in the Presidential election between George Bush and John Kerry. In 2000, Richardson voters cast 28761 votes for president. The increased early voting did not result in significantly higher voter turnout.

George Bush won more votes of Richardsonians in the 2000 and 2004. In 2000, Bush beat Al Gore in Richardson by 67.5% to 28.6%. In 2004, Bush beat John Kerry by 64.5% to 34.4%.

See graphics and data by clicking here.

In 2000 and 2004, no Democratic Presidential candidate won any precincts. However, in 2008 Barack Obama won four out of Richardson’s twenty precincts in Dallas County. Precincts 1708, 1715, 1717, and 1721 all favored Barack Obama while all others favored John McCain.

When looking at the differences between Republican and Democratic votes precinct-by-precinct, all precincts decreased their Republican dominance over the three elections examined. Again 1707 was an exception where the Republican to Democratic vote difference remained the same from 2000 to 2004.

With the exception of one precinct, all precincts in Richardson steadily decreased their percentage of Republican votes for President and increased their Democratic percentages. With the one exception, precinct 1707, the only difference was a 1.8% increase in Republican presidential votes from 2000 to 2004, but otherwise that precinct followed other trends.

In some precincts the change was dramatic. In precinct 1700, the difference was 33.3% in 2000 favoring Republican but in 2008 it was down to 9.7%. Similarly precinct 1705 showed a 33.1% difference in 2000 but was down to 7.1% in 2008. Precinct 1709 showed a 30.0% favor in 2000 and in 2008 that was down to 3.2%.

Two precincts that “flipped” to the Democratic presidential side showed significant Republican lean in 2000. Precincts 1715 and 1717 favored Republicans by 31.7% and 29.8% respectively in 2000. However in 2008 they favored Democrat Obama by 0.4% and 7.8% respectively.

Citywide the difference was 39.0% in 2000 and in 2008 the difference was 14.5%.

Of course our data here only follows presidential voting. We did not look at straight party voting or try to compare other races.

There are other caveats to our study here. Our totals include only Dallas County. We do not expect that adding Collin County would change the overall results and it would not change individual precinct results in any case. We will include Collin County in future election analysis. Also, some of the analysis below does not include precinct 1726, which has so few voters that any small changes in voting skews any trends.

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