2010: Home Field Disadvantage

Among the major gubernatorial hopefuls Tuesday night, only incumbent Rick Perry and former Houston mayor Bill White were able to hold home court.
 
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was trounced in Dallas County, where she claims residence, by 12 percentage points — almost 12,000 votes. She’ll probably find little comfort in the fact that she beat potential spoiler Debra Medina in her home county of Wharton by 5 percentage points, or just over 200 votes. Medina served as chair of the Wharton County Republican Party before running for governor.
 
Perry also dominated Harris County, winning 61 percent of Republican votes there. Bill White took more than 90 percent of Harris County Democratic votes — reflecting his success throughout the state. But Perry’s 96,140 votes were 5,000 more than White won in the county. Farouk Shami, who lives in The Woodlands, took just 6 percent of the Montgomery County vote.
 
Perry’s top counties were Newton, Haskell, Cameron, Orange and Jim Hogg. The top counties for the other contenders were likewise small. But Perry also captured more than 60 percent of the vote in the much larger Montgomery and Harris Counties.
 
For White, the story was more about where he didn’t dominate. He won more than 80 percent of the vote in 121 Texas Counties. White received less than 50 percent of the vote in only 17 counties (eight still haven’t reported). Shami saw his highest percentages in Jim Hogg, Starr, Duval, Jim Wells, and Brooks Counties. In El Paso County, where Shami received some of his most visible support, he only won 28 percent of the vote.