One of the big political stories this week involved Ted Cruz, who won the runoff election against former favorite David Dewhurst on Tuesday. Cruz (Spanish for cross) is the latest tea party sweetheart to win a seat in the Senate, and a lot of Republicans think this is an earth-shaking game-changer.
Here are some numbers that I dug up to help me put things in perspective:
In 2008, the combined Texas vote total (Obama and McCain) was about 7.99 million. McCain won easily with 55.5 percent (4,467,748) to Obama's 43.8 percent (3,521,164). In the absence of more current data, I'll assume that there are at least as many eligible Republican voters today as there were in November 2008.
On Tuesday, there were 1,111,481 votes cast in the GOP runoff, approximately 24.88 percent of total eligible. Cruz won with 631,316 votes, approximately 14.1 percent of the 2008 GOP vote total. The storyline is that the tea people are the most active of the political activists, so I assume that turnout among tea party supporters was extremely high, given the fact that they had a chance to elect one of their rising stars (who is Hispanic to boot).
Conclusions: In Texas, tea party supporters are less than 20 percent of Republican voters, maybe less than 15 percent. Tea party voters are probably less than 10 percent of the total eligible voting population in Texas. And 75 percent of GOP voters didn't care who won, at least not enough to get off their asses and vote. That's an advantage to having a safe Senate seat in a red state.
Here are some numbers that I dug up to help me put things in perspective:
In 2008, the combined Texas vote total (Obama and McCain) was about 7.99 million. McCain won easily with 55.5 percent (4,467,748) to Obama's 43.8 percent (3,521,164). In the absence of more current data, I'll assume that there are at least as many eligible Republican voters today as there were in November 2008.
On Tuesday, there were 1,111,481 votes cast in the GOP runoff, approximately 24.88 percent of total eligible. Cruz won with 631,316 votes, approximately 14.1 percent of the 2008 GOP vote total. The storyline is that the tea people are the most active of the political activists, so I assume that turnout among tea party supporters was extremely high, given the fact that they had a chance to elect one of their rising stars (who is Hispanic to boot).
Conclusions: In Texas, tea party supporters are less than 20 percent of Republican voters, maybe less than 15 percent. Tea party voters are probably less than 10 percent of the total eligible voting population in Texas. And 75 percent of GOP voters didn't care who won, at least not enough to get off their asses and vote. That's an advantage to having a safe Senate seat in a red state.
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