1. As time goes on, more and more of the Katrina refugees in Houston will settle in there and, eventually, change their voting registration. Nobody expects all or even most of them to return to New Orleans at this point, especially with what a haphazard job is being done of rebuilding there. And don't try to be cute - when Spade says Katrina refugees are too busy killing each other to vote he's not talking about rich white people.
Why would someone from New Orleans want to live in Houston? And if they did, why would they not tend to live in areas that are largely inhabited by native Blacks? And if they lived in those areas why would they not
I took Sam Spade's remarks to refer to the many form residents of New Orleans who were either perpetrators or victims of murder in Houston (IIRC, this was around 70 in 2006).
I think you may be getting a little cute here. Let's review:
Culberson won by 34,800. Is it mere coincidence that your threshold was 35,000?
Poe won by 45,000; including 40,000 in Harris County.
McCaul won by 26,000; but 29,000 in Harris County, which represented a 45% margin. The part of the county he represents is much less black than the area represented by Poe. CD 3 (Poe): 9.2% Black; CD 10 (McCaul): 5.2% Black.
Sekula-Gibbs: Where she was on the ballot as a Republican, she received 53,000 more votes than here nearest opponent. No Democrat he contested the race. In total, 100,497 more persons voted for Republicans in that race than voted for Democrats.
If Democrats have held the governorship for 24 the last 32 yeas, why do refer to that as a change? Just because the Democrat State convention held a "No More Lamm" demonstration when he left office?
There has been basically one Democrat senate seat and one Republican senat seat since 1979, with the exception when Ben Campbell switched parties.
Since 1975, Democrats have held 45 of 101 House seats (45%), which is about what they held before 2006, where they picked up a seat where the Republican incumbent ran for Governor.