Texas will send 155 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention, the second most after California. On March 1, more than two-thirds of those delegates (108) will be chosen at the congressional district (CD) level, with each of the state’s 36 districts allocated three delegates. A total of 44 delegates will be chosen at the statewide level, while three Texas Republicans will receive a direct ticket to the convention by virtue of their status as state party leaders.
The number of Republican primary voters expected to cast a ballot in the state’s 36 congressional districts varies dramatically; the number of votes it will take to elect a delegate in some districts may be about 10 times greater than the total needed in others. And on average, the Republican primary voters whose votes are likely to be undervalued tend to be more conservative than those whose votes are likely to be overvalued by the delegate selection process employed by the Texas Republican Party.
Within the congressional districts, if a candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, he or she would receive all three delegates in play. Under the more likely scenario that no candidate wins an absolute majority of the vote in a congressional district, two seats would go to the candidate who receives the most votes and one to the first runner-up. The one exception would be if no candidate garners at least 20 percent of the vote, in which case the top three finishers would all receive one delegate. Assuming no candidate wins an absolute majority of the statewide vote, the 44 statewide delegates will be distributed proportionally to those candidates who win at least 20 percent of the statewide vote as long as at least two candidates reach the 20 percent threshold.
The figure below contains estimates of the 2016 Republican primary voter turnout for each congressional district by taking the average of the vote in the district in the 2014 GOP gubernatorial primary and in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, then increasing that value across the board by one-third. Statewide, a 33 percent increase would result in a record Republican primary turnout of 1.9 million. This is a very rough estimate, and could overstate or (more possibly) understate the actual turnout, especially due to the uncertainty regarding voter participation created by Donald Trump’s presence on the ballot this cycle. The estimates do, however, serve to underscore the dramatic disparities in the number of Texans who are likely to participate in this year’s Republican presidential primary across the state’s 36 congressional districts.
While the number of delegates to the Republican National Convention elected from each congressional district is equal (three each), the number of voters expected to participate in each district is not at all equal. At one end, only between about 10,000 and 15,000 Texans are projected to cast a ballot in CD-29 (Houston), CD-33 (Fort Worth), CD-9 (Houston), CD-30 (Dallas), CD-18 (Houston) and CD-16 (El Paso). At the other end, between about 90,000 and 110,000 Texans are projected to cast ballots in CD-8 (The Woodlands-Conroe), CD-13 (Amarillo-Wichita Falls) CD-4 (Sherman-Texarkana), CD-21 (San Antonio-Austin), CD-11 (Midland-San Angelo) and CD-1 (Tyler-Lufkin). In an extreme example, the vote of a Republican primary voter in Houston’s CD-29 this year is likely to be worth 10 times that of a voter in Tyler’s CD-1 in the congressional district portion of the delegate allocation process. The votes of a CD-29 and CD-1 voter though will be of equal value in the distribution of the 44 statewide delegates.
The figure also places the 36 congressional districts into three categories based on the average level of conservatism of registered voters who identify as Republicans in the district. Drawing on 2011–2015 pooled data from a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, the gold standard of Texas public opinion surveys, the districts were classified according to whether the average district Republican was notably less conservative than the average Republican statewide (green bars), the average district Republican was notably more conservative than the average Republican statewide (red bars), or the average district Republican approximated the average statewide Republican (yellow bars). These classifications were based on voters’ ideological self-placement along a scale of one to seven, ranging from extremely liberal to extremely conservative.
The figure highlights that on average, the votes of Texas Republican primary voters in the congressional districts where Republicans are the most conservative are notably worth less than those of Texas Republican primary voters in the congressional districts where Republicans are the least conservative (albeit still much more conservative than the average Texan). For example, the projections indicate that it will take around 26,000 votes to elect a congressional district level convention delegate in the 12 districts whose average Republican is notably more conservative than the average state Republican, but less than half that amount — around 12,000 votes — to elect a congressional district level delegate in the 15 districts whose average Republican is notably less conservative than the average state Republican.
Mark P. Jones is the Baker Institute’s fellow in political science as well as the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies at Rice University.