You might want to sit down for this shocker: Central Austin is really, really liberal. Beyond that, while the Nov. 8 ballot certainly produced some positive signs of blueness spreading beyond the Birkenstock Belt – particularly in those stubbornly reddish House districts to the west – for the most part, the results tell the usual story.
One Man, One Woman, One Vote
The map shows actual vote margins, rather than percentages, for and against Prop. 2, which gives you some indication both of the vagaries of turnout (on the Eastside) and of how polarized some neighborhoods are about gay marriage (on the Westside). But even this is misleading, because the overall spread in the Prop. 2 results was so lopsided. In the strongest pro-Prop. 2 box, Precinct 373 (in Lago Vista), the heterosexists won by 333 votes. There were 27 boxes where the amendment lost by an equal or greater margin, with Precinct 332 (Zilker) leading that pack with an 850-vote thumbs down. (Percentagewise, the most rabidly anti-Prop. 2 box was Precinct 421 in Travis Heights, where 93.3% of voters just said no.)
Most, but not all, of those dark blue boxes were in Central Austin (HD 49), which rejected Prop. 2 by a margin of nearly 61%. (The chart also shows margins – i.e., Prop. 2 lost countywide by 26,946 votes, or 19.9%.) It’s worth noting, however, just how far beyond those confines anti-amendment sentiment could be found – all the way west to Lakeway and Circle C, and to the county line heading both north and south. Such pagan immorality helped turn both HD 48 in the northwest and HD 47 in the southwest – both currently held by Republicans – against this crowning achievement of the 2005 Legislature, albeit narrowly in the latter case. Only the northern HD 50 was able to (also narrowly) defend the sanctity of its marriages, helped along by rampant godbaggery in the streets of Pflugerville. HD 50 was also the most polarized of all the districts, however, with 23 boxes voting yes and 20 voting no.
| HD 46 | HD 47 | HD 48 | HD 49 | HD 50 | HD 51 | TOTAL | ||
| (East) | (SW) | (NW) | (CEN) | (N) | (SE) | |||
| MEDIAN PRECINCT TURNOUT | 19.0% | 27.3% | 30.0% | 30.3% | 26.2% | 14.6% | 26.1% | |
| PROP. 2 | ||||||||
| Total margin | -1,840 | -587 | -4,971 | -17,472 | 922 | -2,998 | -26,946 | |
| % margin | -14.3% | -1.9% | -17.2% | -60.6% | 3.8% | -29.0% | -19.9% | |
The Krusee Three
Props. 1, 3, and 9, all with local implications for Travis County and all brought to you by state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, bit hard dirt throughout the county – although the first two did prevail statewide. Prop. 1, the rail relocation measure, did the best of the three, a result that may have as much to do with ballot order as with the idea’s intrinsic merits. The same may be true of Prop. 9, extending RMA board terms, down at the end of a too-long list of exasperating bullshit. To the degree all the amendments were referenda on the GOP hegemon, their sound rejection by central city and southeast (HD 51) voters is no great surprise; voters in the equally Democratic east (HD 46) were a little less querulous, though they too were having nothing of the toll road people. More than half the boxes in Travis Co. said no to all three of these props as well as Prop. 2.
| HD 46 | HD 47 | HD 48 | HD 49 | HD 50 | HD 51 | TOTAL | ||
| (East) | (SW) | (NW) | (CEN) | (N) | (SE) | |||
| PROP. 1 (RAIL) | ||||||||
| Total margin | -905 | -2,683 | -208 | -2,863 | -1,607 | -1,028 | -9,294 | |
| % margin | -7.5% | -9.4% | -0.8% | -10.8% | -7.1% | -10.7% | -7.4% | |
| PROP. 3 (ECON. DEV.) | ||||||||
| Total margin | -1,573 | -3,931 | -3,780 | -7,686 | -2,918 | -1,492 | -21,380 | |
| % margin | -13.6% | -14.5% | -14.6% | -30.6% | -13.6% | -16.2% | -17.8% | |
| PROP. 9 (RMA BOARD) | ||||||||
| Total margin | -3,173 | -5,718 | -3,022 | -8,284 | -4,076 | -2,667 | -26,940 | |
| % margin | -27.6% | -21.1% | -11.8% | -33.6% | -19.1% | -29.5% | -22.6% | |
The County Bonds
Support for the Travis Co. parks and open space bond (TC 2) was only a little narrower, and a lot broader, than opposition to Prop. 2. The fact that most of the visible campaigning for the bond package focused on the parks bond does much to explain its across-the-county higher numbers. The other two bonds proved much less popular in east and southeast Austin – perhaps unsurprising for the jail measure (TC 3), but a bit curious for the road measure (TC 1), which was heavily weighted with projects in the three House districts where it did the most poorly.
| HD 46 | HD 47 | HD 48 | HD 49 | HD 50 | HD 51 | TOTAL | ||
| (East) | (SW) | (NW) | (CEN) | (N) | (SE) | |||
| TC BOND 1 (ROADS) | ||||||||
| Total margin | 896 | 3,770 | 5,675 | 4,671 | 2,274 | 517 | 17,803 | |
| % margin | 7.6% | 13.4% | 21.2% | 18.1% | 10.2% | 5.5% | 14.3% | |
| TC BOND 2 (PARKS) | ||||||||
| Total margin | 3,329 | 7,415 | 8,503 | 14,174 | 3,182 | 3,095 | 39,698 | |
| % margin | 27.6% | 25.9% | 31.2% | 53.0% | 14.2% | 32.5% | 31.3% | |
| TC BOND 3 (JAIL) | ||||||||
| Total margin | 535 | 2,630 | 4,439 | 3,346 | 1,505 | 252 | 12,707 | |
| % margin | 4.5% | 9.3% | 16.6% | 12.9% | 6.8% | 2.7% | 10.2% | |
| # boxes to vote | ||||||||
| Yes on all 4 props | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | |
| No on all 4 props | 17 | 26 | 20 | 38 | 15 | 17 | 133 | |
| Yes on all 3 TC bonds | 16 | 35 | 41 | 44 | 31 | 12 | 179 | |
| No on all 3 TC bonds | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 7 | |
| Yes TC 2, no on others | 7 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 24 | |
This article appears in November 18 • 2005.