The ride has been a blast, but it's just about over for Democrat Wendy Davis, after early voting numbers reveal a significant deficit against Greg Abbott (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman and The Associated Press)
If the Wendy Davis campaign had Al Michaels on retainer, they can cut him loose. No miracles tonight.
I’ve never been accused of political expertise, but it would seem obvious that Davis needed to be within striking distance of Republican Greg Abbott in early voting. That would give her a chance to pull it out on Election Day.
Instead, she’s down by more than 18 points in early returns. With the first 1.7 million votes counted, Abbott was at 58.47 percent to Davis’ 40.04. A well-funded Democrat with a coordinated turnout machine could close the gap, but that’s more gap than Davis plus Battleground Texas can handle.
You might have been dubious about predictions of 100 percent rain, but after a day of heavy showers across pretty much every inch of North Texas, it doesn’t look good for the blues.
I still don’t know exactly why, but if conventional wisdom holds and bad weather depresses Democratic turnout more than Republican, there aren’t enough counties for Davis to make up that difference.
It was amusing Friday when Battleground Texas — the effort led by veterans of the Obama campaigns to “turn Texas blue” — screwed up basic statistics and proclaimed early voting turnout running 36 percent ahead of 2010, only to have to retract:
In the memo, Battleground Texas senior adviser Jeremy Bird, who was national field director of President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, wrote: ”The early vote numbers this year are very encouraging for [gubernatorial nominee] Wendy Davis and the Democratic ticket – and all signs point to this being a fight to the finish.” [...]
Hours later, the organization had to remove that memo from its website, after it became clear that Battleground Texas was using inaccurately low tallies from 2010. Spokeswoman Lynda Tran said by email that its initial estimates were “inadvertently based on incomplete data.”
Meanwhile, the campaign of GOP gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott came up with a different conclusion: Early voting, which began Oct. 20 and ended Friday, drew fewer ballots than it did in 2010.
In fact, early voting turnout lower than 2010, coupled with predictions of day-long rain, led Dallas County elections administrator Toni Pippins-Poole to downgrade her turnout prediction a couple of percentage points.
I suspect this newspaper will spill some ink analyzing why Wendy Davis, with all her prominence and promise, went the way of every other Democrat in the post-Ann Richards era.
One amateur view is that too much of her fame and campaign were built around a single issue, a filibuster to beat back a bill that outlawed late-term abortion. Whatever your position on that question, understanding how a majority of a Texas electorate might see it is a pretty important first step in any statewide campaign.
A nonpartisan Austin insider was telling me that he never thought Davis had much of a chance, but he was disappointed that Leticia Van de Putte tied her campaign for lieutenant governor so strongly to Davis.
Van de Putte, the guy said, was the kind of pro-business Democrat who might have stood a chance, especially against a polarizing Republican like Dan Patrick. Instead, she let Davis’ growing negatives drag them both down.