The day after
The great divide: President Obama carries top 4 Texas cities and still getstrounced in Lone Star State
I know I sound like Chuck Todd, but election statistics can be fascinating. In looking at vote totals of the presidential race in Harris County, I noticed that while President Obama lost the state of Texas badly, he outpaced Gov. Mitt Romney in the state's four largest cities.
With 100 percent of the states precincts reporting, Obama won more than 60 percent of the vote in Travis County, home to Austin, the state's most liberal city. Romney trailed with just over 36 percent of the vote.
Seems like now there are not only red and blue states, but a great divide between red and blue counties, too.
Dallas County appears to be on its way to becoming almost as reliably Democrat. Obama took just over 57 percent of the vote to Romney's nearly 42 percent.
In Bexar County (San Antonio), Obama tallied nearly 52 percent to Romney's 47 percent.
Harris County was the most competitive of the large counties, as Obama eked out a narrow win over Romney by just 585 votes (49.4 percent to 49.3 percent).
Obama also did extremely well in El Paso, the state's sixth largest city, as well as pockets of the Rio Grande Valley and Jefferson County (Beaumont).
However, the rest of the state is a sea of red. Romney racked up big margins just about everywhere else in the state — as much as 90 percent of the vote in some west Texas counties and a sizeable lead in the populous suburbs surrounding the state's major cities.
Around Houston, for example, Romney took 52 percent of the vote in Fort Bend County, 66 percent in Brazoria County and nearly 80 percent of the vote in Montgomery County.
Seems like now there are not only red and blue states, but a great divide between red and blue counties, too.
