The West Austin Democrats have put up an analysis of the Donna Howard win in House District 48. If you're a wonk and like looking at the numbers you'll love this.
West Austin Dems HD48 AnalysisThe Austin Chronicle also ran a story of the victory, which is where I got the link to the West Austin Dems analysis.
Howard Defeats BentzinThe West Austin Democrats had tapped the HD 48 race as a top priority this year, said club president Hunter Ellinger. The Republicans, he said, "spent a ton of money and almost doubled their vote in the run-off, so the real story here is, why is it that they still can't turn out people to vote?" Ellinger scoffs at GOP attempts to spin Tuesday's results as just another liberal Travis County stunt. "This is the most establishment district you can think of," he said. "It's conservative establishment and it's liberal establishment. It's Karl Rove, it's Liz Carpenter. But it's mostly a Republican district that is pro-public-schools."
Ellinger spent Tuesday night assembling a functional analysis of precinct-by-precinct returns and comparing them to past elections (posted on the West Austin Democrats' Web site, www.westaustindemocrats.org) "Just looking at the precincts, there were some Republicans who voted for Donna," he said, "but I think for the most part that the people who are willing to go vote for Bush are now so disgusted with
Perry and the others that they just stay home." On that point, even while Bentzin's 9,281 vote total was 81% higher than last month's election, it still wasn't enough to pull him out of his January slump, Ellinger said. "That would almost always be enough to win a run-off, but Howard increased her vote by 88%." Indeed, the overall turnout was a surprisingly high 22.24%. Sonia