The biggest news in our presidential race was Ralph Nader, who pulled higher-than-statewide, higher-than-nationwide numbers everywhere in Travis County. Sure, a lot of those votes were Nader-trades, cast by people who knew that in Texas they had nothing to lose. But does that really explain Nader winning 7.6% of the Southwest vote? (He got nearly 6% at box 304 in Circle C Ranch, for heaven’s sake.) Perhaps they, too, thought they were voting for someone else.
We all know that 6% of the vote and a dollar will buy you a small coffee at the TigerMarket, but 36.7% of the vote, as Nader got at box 131 in Cherrywood, will get you a viable third-party candidate for, say, state rep or county commissioner. Note, also, that while Nader didn’t win any boxes, and he didn’t beat Al Gore in any boxes, he did beat Bush in 21 boxes. Sure, those boxes are highly concentrated in the city center, but with redistricting on the horizon, who knows how many of those boxes will end up in the district of a vulnerable legislator?
Lest you think the Nader craze can’t be generalized to a ballotwide Green presence, consider Gary Dugger, who took 26 local boxes away from Republican incumbent railroad commissioner Charlie Matthews — who isn’t even such a bad guy, as GOP railroad commissioners go. And not by small margins, either: at box 320 in Clarksville, Dugger won by over 20%. In many Central and Eastside boxes, anybody who isn’t Republican usually wins, even if he’s Gene Kelly. But when given a choice between a Green and a Libertarian, the urban core vote consistently voted for the Greens.
Republicans don’t seem to embrace Libertarians with the same enthusiasm Democrats show for Greens. Given the choice, voters in some of the strongest Republican precincts in the county preferred a Democrat like Congressman Lloyd Doggett over a Libertarian challenger. However in the most solidly GOP boxes out in the Northwest — where Republican Congressman Ron Paul and state Sen. Jeff Wentworth were on the ballot — Republican voters didn’t have to make that choice. In fact, their choices were straightforward: Of the two dozen or so contested races on ballots, not a single one was won by a Democrat.
| Total | Central | East | North/NE | NW | South/SE | SW | |
| Bush | 46.9% | 31.8% | 23.8% | 48.5% | 62.0% | 37.8% | 55.6% |
| Gore | 41.6% | 43.4% | 66.8% | 42.4% | 32.5% | 56.1% | 32.9% |
| Nader | 10.4% | 22.8% | 7.7% | 7.4% | 6.9% | 9.7% | 7.6% |
| Browne | 0.9% | 1.2% | 0.6% | 0.9% | 0.9% | 0.8% | 0.8% |
| Buchanan | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
This article appears in November 24 • 2000.