Anti-gun Democrats and gun control supporters have been puzzling over Uvalde County’s election results since the moment it became evident that Gov. Greg Abbott had won a lopsided majority of voters on Election Day last month, and we’ve heard plenty of excuses offered over the past few weeks; most of them having to do with how cold, callous, and uncaring residents must be in order to cast a vote against “common sense gun safety measures” like Robert Francis O’Rourke’s proposed ban on “assault weapons.”
One columnist, however, believes she’s found an even more fundamental factor in Uvalde County staying red last month: “racial hierachy.”
Like many Americans, I was shocked when the numbers in Uvalde came back in favor of Abbott. It would make sense that citizens in Uvalde would vote for a candidate like Beto O’Rourke after the tragedy they witnessed this past Spring. Why didn’t Uvalde vote for the “gun sense” candidate like Broward did? Perhaps Uvalde citizens didn’t prioritize gun violence over other issues like abortion and the state economy.
It’s easy to say that the tragedy at Robb Elementary wasn’t enough to change the direction of the electorate in Uvalde, but I don’t believe that this is the case. While conducting research for this article, I found it much harder to find voting resources for Uvalde than for Broward. Broward provides concrete information about municipal elections and precinct access, as well as information about redistricting and election day procedures.
Uvalde on the other hand doesn’t even provide updated numbers on voter registration. The accessibility of election information appears to make a difference in voter turnout given that a higher percentage of registered voters vote on election day in Broward than in Uvalde. The fact that it was so hard to find election information for Uvalde compared to Broward proved to me that political leaders want to make voting as hard as possible for Uvalde citizens.
At first glance, comparing Broward to Uvalde seems fair. But when you look deeper, it’s clear that they can’t be held to the same standards because of the role of race in these societies. Broward is over 60% white and Uvalde is nearly 80% Hispanic/Latino – Uvalde’s elected officials do not represent the racial makeup of the county. This has created what Uvalde natives describe as a racial hierarchy.
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The majority of Uvalde is Hispanic/Latino, and the majority of Hispanic/Latino citizens generally feel that Democrats care about them more than Republicans. Based on this, Uvalde should be voting in favor of Democrats like Beto O’Rourke and subsequently voting for gun-sense candidates. But Uvalde’s leaders wish to maintain the racial hierarchy because it allows them to stay in power. So they limit access to voting information and resources in order to make voting harder for citizens. Ultimately, this has led to Uvalde voting in favor of Republicans and against gun-sense.
Don’t you love it when the left makes sweeping generalizations based on the dominant ethnicity of a particular location? Uvalde is mostly Hispanic, so therefore they should be voting blue. If they’re not, it must be because the existing power structure in Uvalde is disenfranchising their vote.
A quick look at the election figures in Uvalde County, however, shows there’s nothing nefarious going on here.
Statewide, about 45.7% of registered Texas voters cast a ballot in this year’s election. In Uvalde County, the number of votes cast is right in line with the statewide average.
According to author Cheynie Singleton’s theory, Democratic strongholds should have had much more robust voting totals than Uvalde County, but the evidence shows the opposite was true in many cases. In Harris County, turnout was 42.7%. In Dallas County it was 43.8%. In Travis County (home to the progressive oasis of Austin) voter turnout was a bit higher at 52%, but even if Uvalde County had increased its turnout to Travis County’s percentage it still wouldn’t have resulted in a win for O’Rourke; either in Uvalde County or across the state of Texas.
Based on the voting turnout figures, there’s no reason to believe that those in charge of voting in Uvalde County cooked the books or made it harder for the majority of voters to cast a ballot. In fact, this year’s election results in the county are virtually identical to what they were in 2018, when Greg Abbott won 60.2% of the vote. Last month’s total for Abbott? 60.18%.
The simplest explanation for these results isn’t “racial hierachy” or a county comprised of a bunch of cold-hearted bubbas who could care less about murdered school children, as emotionally satisfying as that might be for progressives and gun control activists. Instead, it’s just that Uvalde is a pretty conservative county, and most voters rejected the idea that Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s anti-gun agenda would make them any safer. It doesn’t mean they don’t care about the murders at Robb Elementary, just that they didn’t buy in to the idea that we can ban our way to safety… starting with legal gun owners first.
