Yesterday’s results for the 2024 Primary are in. The races we predicted ended as we had predicted shortly after the early voting numbers were published by the El Paso County Elections Department. Years of data analytics and historical records provide us access to enough information to predict election outcomes. By the time the final unofficial results were released, 57,676, or about 12% of the voters had voted. In 2018, 67,942, or about 16% of the voters cast ballots. In 2020, 88,311, or about 19% of the voters cast a ballot. And in 2022, 56,855, or almost 12% ballots were cast.
Yesterday’s ballot count mirrors those in 2022.
As expected, President Joe Biden received 84% of El Paso’s Democratic votes. There were no surprises in yesterday’s election. Likely the most controversial race was the Marlene González versus Joy Degenhart race for the 388th District Court. González overwhelmingly kept her seat, defeating Degenhart by almost 15,000 votes. Degenhart sent out a mailer accusing González being a tax burden to the community. A complaint was filed against Degenhart for a campaign sign violation.
The other controversy in the election was an accusation levied against Linda Perez who kept her County Criminal At Law #1 seat with over 5,000 more votes than her opponent, Linda Estrada. Estrada sent out a mailer accusing Perez of not being Democrat enough to be elected by Democrat voters. There were 11 contested races on the Democratic ticket that voters showed interest in, including the González and Perez contest.
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The Winners
In the contest for the 65th District Court, Selina Saenz outperformed Omar Carmona 59% to 41%. Lyda Ness Garcia fended off a challenge from her predecessor, Mike Herrera with 58% of the vote. Marlene González beat challenger Joy Degenhart with 73% of the vote. Linda Estrada lost to Linda Perez, who kept her seat with 59% of the vote.
For the County Attorney seat, Sergio Saldivar lost to Christina Sanchez. Sanchez received 69% of the vote. For the County Commissioner 1 seat, it was Jackie Butler who won against Pete Faraone with 59% of the vote. For County Commissioner 2 seat, the incumbent, Iliana Holguin kept her seat with 77% of the vote, beating challenger Virginia Rodriguez.
There were three contests that will be settled in a runoff election.
The Three Runoffs
The three runoffs were for the District Attorney, Sheriff and State Representative District 77 seats.
For the District Attorney seat, it will be James Montoya against Alma Trejo in May. Montoya received 38% of the vote to Trejo’s 36%. Also in May, Bobby Flores will face off against Oscar Ugarte for the Sheriff’s seat. Ugarte received 43% of the vote against Flores’ 24%.
Likely the most heated runoff election will be for the District 77 seat as Norma Chávez faces off against Vince Perez. Perez led with 38% of the vote to Chávez’ 32%.
Whoever prevails – Montoya or Trejo – in the District Attorney runoff will face Republican Bill Hicks in November. The District Attorney race is the only contest that will not be settled until November because Hicks can be competitive against his Democratic Party challenger.
On The Republican Side
In El Paso, the Republican candidates generally do not prevail in the November General Election against their Democratic Party opponents, although there have been some Republican winners in the past.
The takeaway from the Republicans in El Paso is that Donald J. Trump was overwhelmingly selected by the El Paso Republicans with 16,805 of the 20,567 Republican ballots cast. Nikki Haley came in second with 2,851 Republican ballots.
For November, the only competitive Republican appears to be Bill Hicks who received 16,597 Republican votes yesterday. Hicks will be running in November as the incumbent District Attorney, after he was appointed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to replace Yvonne Rosales after resignation. Hicks will be challenged by James Montoya or Alma Trejo, depending on who prevails in the upcoming runoff.
Criticisms Of Predictions
Shortly after we published our predictions, we were contacted by several individuals both questioning our methodology and arguing that publishing results before the ballots are counted is a form of voter suppression. The arguments being that voters would be discoursed from voting if they believed that their candidate had already lost.
That argument is false in that when we published our predictions, the polls had already closed. Any voters who had not voted would not be voting this election cycle.
The most criticism was from those who argued that we did not know how voters were voting and as such we could not know who would win until the final vote was counted.
Our predictive models are based on years of historical voting data and voter profiles.
Based on our large voter data sets we can model election outcomes and voter profiles that are mostly accurate. For example, during the early voting period, 24,697 voters cast a ballot. On Monday we predicted that about 30,000 votes would be cast yesterday. Yesterday, 32,979 voters voted, slightly higher than our prediction.
We have also noted over the years that generally, the candidate that is ahead when the early voter count is released is usually the winner of the contest. In tight races, like the sheriff’s or District 77 races when there are more than two candidates, the result is usually a runoff election between the two leading candidates.
In the sheriff’s race, Bobby Flores was slightly ahead of Ryan Urrutia for second place. Flores maintained his lead when the unofficial results were released.
As shown by the historical record and although we felt the race was too close to call, the result is that Flores kept his lead going into Election Day as the historical record shows.
Unlike other jurisdictions in Texas, the outcome of elections are easier to predict because El Paso voters are generally predicable and because El Paso is a one-party community.
Disclosure
Each election cycle, El Paso News publishes the names of the political candidates that the technology company owned by Martín Paredes provides branding and technology services to. Although not required to, we provide this list to our readers for transparency purposes. Clients of Cognent have no influence over the stories we choose to cover. Click here for more details.