We’ve had a huge improvement in election results and incredible success in rebuilding the party since I became County Chair. There’s a lot that can be discussed and debated, but I prefer to focus on a few key things that matter the most.
Even with the challenges of the 2020 election, with our success impaired by limiting direct voter contact due to the pandemic, Collin County still had the most improvement in Presidential votes of any county in the state.
This graph represents the votes by the candidate who received the most votes – President in Presidential years and Governor or U.S Senator in Gubernatorial years.
Key points about our election results:
- We closed what was a 31 point gap in 2012 to a 4 point gap in 2020
- We’re turning blue faster than the rest of Texas. In fact, there isn’t a similar county in Texas that has turned blue faster than we have. That is shown in the next graph.
Presidential, US Senate, and Governor, which usually are the best performing races on the ballot, often are affected by personality. A better indication of progress is our base vote. This is measured by the performance of candidates in a statewide office which is mostly unknown and for which the candidates rarely conduct strong campaigns. Good examples are candidates for Justice on the State Supreme Court of Court of Criminal Appeals. Voters typically vote for the candidates based strictly on party affiliation.
What this shows is that we steadily improved from 2014 through 2018 at a rate faster than the rest of the state. Plus, we had a very slight improvement in 2020 while the rest of the state declined a bit. Progress like this helped put eight justices on the Fifth Court of Appeals in 2018, and another three justices in 2020. Many outside the legal community don’t understand the significance of this, but those who work in the legal community think it’s huge. This is one of the most influential Appeals courts in the state and moving it from all thirteen justices being Republicans to just two with eleven Democrats has had an impact across the region, particularly in Dallas County.
In addition, a metric we don’t look at often enough is how many candidates we have on the ballot.
When I took office in 2014 Democrats had filed for barely over 10% of the local and regional offices on the ballot. By 2020 we had increased this to over 75% of the local and regional offices on the ballot!
Another measure of how well we have done is our fundraising.
Fundraising is generally much higher during even year partisan elections. But from 2015 through 2018 we beat that typical boom and bust cycle with constantly improving performance. We had almost $450,000 pass through the party in 2020! 2021 was our best “off year” on record, almost matching our 2018 performance.