Do Precinct Chairs Matter?

What three Dallas County elections tell us

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TLDR

• For the November 2024, May 2025, and November 2025 elections, precincts with Democratic precinct chairs outperformed precincts without Democratic precinct chairs in terms of overall turnout.

• In terms of getting out the vote for Democrats, precincts with precinct chairs will help a community’s Democratic turnout, but only if that community already leans blue.

• Middle- and upper-income communities tend to fare best for Democratic turnout.

• Lower-income communities tend not to be affected by precinct chairs, especially in the two smaller elections, either in terms of overall turnout or Democratic turnout. Of course, exceptions occur.

• The takeaway? As I’ve been saying, the Democratic Party’s seemingly renewed vigor on recruiting new precinct chairs is great, but it’ll work mostly for communities that already boast an established history of at least leaning toward Democrats. For lower-income communities, the key is to not discuss politics. Instead, listen to their needs and get to work. This is the two-pronged approach that I’ve been clamoring about. More about that in the Conclusion section.

Background

Happy New Year! And Happy Midterm Election Year!

To celebrate the start of 2026 and the start of yet another insane election cycle, I’m doing what I love most: diving into political data. Specifically, I want to answer these questions: Do precinct chairs increase overall turnout? And do they help the Democratic Party’s turnout?

To help answer those, I compiled data from three election cycles in Dallas County: the November 2024 presidential election, the May 2025 local election, and the November 2025 constitutional amendment election. I believe that these three serve as a good representative sample of elections that everybody knows about (presidential) and elections in which hardly anyone votes (local).

We’ll be examining two key performance indicators (KPIs) for the November 2024 election and November 2025 elections: overall turnout and Democratic turnout. For the May 2025 election, since there is no clear line between Democratic and Republican candidates and issues in nonpartisan races, we’ll be looking only at voter turnout.

For each community in Dallas County, we’ll be querying precincts with precinct chairs and precincts without precinct chairs. In the end, we’ll gain a better understanding of how precinct chairs affect the county party during election cycles.

But before we begin, what exactly is a precinct chair?

A precinct chair is the lowest-level elected official. There are two precinct chair positions for each county precinct: one for Democrats and one for Republicans. Each of these precinct chairs has one overarching goal: to get out the vote for their party. That is why they are the worker bees of the Democratic Party: they do the dirty work that no one else wants to do, for no pay and hardly any glory. I focus only on Democratic precinct chairs, naturally.

And what is a precinct? It’s basically a small division of a county. These precincts are drawn and redistricted much like congressional districts and state house districts. In fact, when those larger districts get redrawn every 10 years (or whenever the Republican Party feels like it), they base their boundaries largely on precincts. Dallas County alone has over 800 precincts. Of those 800, many are too small to even realistically have people run as precinct chairs. But as of the November 2025 election, 53% of the county’s “real” precincts are served by Democratic precinct chairs.

For this analysis and all of the analyses that I undertake, I base the work off of the data scaffolding I describe here.

Some housekeeping items

• There are also foster precinct chairs. These are people who don’t reside in the precinct they represent. Some people adopt precincts because of a lack of Democrats within those precincts who want to become precinct chairs. In this analysis, I don’t distinguish between precinct chairs and foster precinct chairs. Both of these groups put in the same amount of work.

• There are a number of precincts in Dallas County with less than 50 registered voters and with no precinct chair, as I mentioned above. I’ve excluded these precincts, since counting them would skew the numbers. It’s already difficult to find Democrats to become precinct chairs in precincts with thousands of registered voters, let alone stumbling upon them in precincts with less than 50 voters.

• This analysis is done for communities with both precincts with precinct chairs and precincts without precinct chairs. Communities that have all their precincts filled (Park Cities in November 2025) and those that have no precinct chair (Balch Springs in November 2025) are excluded. Again, it would skew the data.

• The number of precinct chairs keeps changing each election. I account for those changes. I keep a record of precinct chairs for each election.

• The percentage of precincts with precinct chairs in each community is not a primary focus of this analysis. I’ll instead point out right now that even in economically disadvantaged communities with low voter turnout, the rates of precincts that have precinct chairs rival that of the county total. South Dallas is one example. I’ve talked about this phenomenon in a previous post.

• For simplicity and conciseness, all data is presented in text and list formats. If you prefer images, an AI explainer video can be found above.

• When we examine the effects of precincts with precinct chairs vs. those without, negative percentages denote instances in which precincts without precinct chairs turned out more voters than ones with precinct chairs. This usually happens in swing or right-leaning communities.

• To further make matters slightly simpler, I’ll refer to precincts with precinct chairs as “filled precincts” and precincts without precinct chairs as “unfilled precincts.”

November 2024 election

Overall turnout

Let’s begin by looking at the top five communities in Dallas County that turned out its voters during this election. I should note that Dallas County as a whole turned out 58.41% of its registered voters:

Park Cities: 77.60%
Sunnyvale: 76.55%
Coppell: 71.07%
Preston Hollow: 70.29%
Northeast Dallas: 7.95%

And here are the bottom five:

Piedmont: 42.05%
Pleasant Grove: 41.28%
Kleberg-Rylie: 41.14%
East Oak Cliff: 41.07%
South Dallas: 39.18%

Notice anything? Communities with money tend to have more time to think about voting. This throughline will reappear later.

And across almost every community, filled precincts outperformed unfilled precincts in terms of overall turnout. As a whole, Dallas County’s filled precincts turned out 6.06% more voters than its unfilled precincts. The results were the brightest in Southern Dallas County, where filled precincts outperformed unfilled precincts by an average of 8.87%. Even in the bare West — with Irving and Grand Prairie, which are not known for having tons of precinct chairs — filled precincts turned out more voters than unfilled precincts by 4.16%.

Here are the top five communities in which filled precincts did better than unfilled ones. The percentage represents the number of voters in filled precincts more than that in unfilled precincts:

Northwest Dallas: 19.89%
Lake Highlands: 19.36%
Farmers Branch: 14.01%
Far East Dallas: 13.70%
Southwest Dallas: 13.58%

And the bottom five:

Lancaster & Glenn Heights: 0.47%
Piedmont: 0.22%
Coppell: -2.95%
Sachse: -4.82%
Richardson: -12.59%

Coppell and Sachse, which voted for Kamala Harris with a share of 50.51% and 40.43% of registered voters, respectively, experienced more turnout in unfilled precincts than filled ones. As noted in the Housekeeping section above, this happens with swing or right-leaning communities.

Strangely, however, unfilled precincts also outperformed filled precincts in Richardson, a community whose 55.17% of registered voters cast their ballots for Harris, but whose unfilled precincts outperformed filled precincts by 12%. This one’s tough. There were three unfilled precincts in Richardson for this election cycle, and all of them seem ultra-conservative. The share for Harris across these three was paltry, and voter turnout here outpaced most of the rest of Richardson’s blue-leaning precincts.

This finding indicates that, in some cases, ideological drive in a small pocket of highly engaged conservative voters can briefly overpower the turnout efforts of filled precincts in the broader blue community. In examples like this, the Democratic Party’s approach of recruiting precinct chairs specifically for those unfilled precincts likely helps with both overall turnout and Democratic turnout.

Democratic turnout

As far as Democratic turnout, let’s focus on voters who chose Harris. For the county as a whole, 61.31% of voters picked her over Trump. Again, Southern Dallas County deserves most of that credit, with 80.08% of its voters picking the would-be first black female President of the United States. The North, the lowest-performing region for Harris, still went for her, with 53.85%.

Across the county, filled precincts turned out 4.95% more Harris voters than unfilled precincts, with Southern and Eastern Dallas County shining the brightest at 5.06% each.

Here are the top five communities in which filled precincts turned out more Harris voters than unfilled precincts:

Richardson: 11.11%
Lancaster & Glenn Heights: 8.99%
Kiest Park: 7.65%
Duncanville: 5.32%
Piedmont: 5.19%

And the bottom five:

Preston Hollow: -3.42%
Park Cities: -4.49%
Lake Highlands: -5.91%
Farmers Branch: -7.81%
Northwest Dallas: -14.07%

You’ll notice that all top five communities outpaced the county total of 4.95%. All but one of them are considered middle- or upper-middle class.

The outlier, Piedmont, an underserved and predominantly Hispanic community, bucks that trend. If you combine the fact that its filled precincts turned out 5.19% more Harris voters than its unfilled precincts with the fact that its filled precincts and unfilled precincts turned out almost the same rate of voters overall, imagine how deadly Piedmont would be in the Democratic Party’s arsenal. Unfortunately, however, as we’ll see later, Piedmont and similar communities show up like this once every four years. If we want them to show up more frequently, we need to focus on long-term relationship-building.

And yet again, more outliers abound. For the above listed communities whose unfilled precincts outperformed filled ones, all but one (Park Cities) voted for Harris by mostly healthy margins. (Preston Hollow was the lowest, at 52.31%.)

Northwest Dallas actually did better than the county total of 61.31%, with 63.03%. Does that mean that we should neglect Northwest Dallas because its unfilled precincts vastly outperform its filled ones? Of course not. We’ve seen what happens when we take largely Democratic communities for granted. Northwest Dallas, especially, with its highly diverse population and economics, needs to see and hear more from the Democratic Party to ensure that it goes nowhere. In 2024, 55% of its precincts were filled, beating the county total that year by about 6%. We can still nudge that up a bit.

In Park Cities, however, one of the most conservative and wealthiest communities in Dallas County, Harris lost with 32.64%, even though she did better in its unfilled precincts. I don’t think this really means anything, though. This is more a statistical anomaly than a bearer of some kind of news. Don’t hold your breath for Park Cities to vote blue anytime soon.

May 2025 election

Overall turnout

A local election doesn’t provide as much insight as a presidential election for a number of reasons:

• Local elections in Texas are nonpartisan. Sure, we all pretty much know who’s a Democrat and Republican, but a lot of times, Democrats and Republicans can run against each other.

• Not every seat is contested and not every precinct has an issue to vote on, which leaves a lot of voters unable to vote for anyone or anything.

• Local elections in Texas have embarrassingly low turnout. Unless something contentious is happening with a school board or city council, only the true political nerds exercise their right to vote.

So we’re basically made to look only at overall turnout. But even there, we have some insights to chew on. The county overall turnout stood at 8.35%.

Here are the top five communities for overall turnout:

Sunnyvale: 32.04%
Park Cities: 19.36%
Richardson: 18.13%
DeSoto: 14.54%
Coppell: 13.56%

And the bottom five:

South Dallas: 4.60%
Pleasant Grove: 4.55%
East Dallas: 4.23%
Kleberg-Rylie: 4.01%
Downtown: 2.51%

What is the difference between these two groups of communities? Primarily two: money and perceived importance of the election itself. Sunnyvale, Park Cities, and DeSoto are wealthier than average. DeSoto also had a good number of city council races and a mayoral race.

South Dallas, Pleasant Grove, and Kleberg-Rylie, on the other hand, all suffer from economic disadvantage. Kleberg-Rylie in particular, a community that had a city council race go to a runoff, still only turned out barely 4% of its voters.

And while Downtown Dallas doesn’t suffer from nearly as much financial hardship, their city council member had no opponent on the ballot.

As far as the difference a precinct chair can make? The county total for this KPI stood at 2.45%. Here are the top five communities whose filled precincts outperformed its unfilled:

Farmers Branch: 7.00%
Preston Hollow: 6.68%
Buckner Terrace: 6.63%
Far North Dallas: 6.07%
Southwest Dallas: 4.81%

And the bottom five:

Richardson: -1.04%
East Dallas: -1.27%
Rowlett: -2.03%
Southeast Suburbs: -2.20%
Coppell: -5.14%

For the top five, we see people in filled precincts located in middle- and upper-middle income communities vote at higher rates than their counterparts in unfilled precincts. The one community that breaks this cycle is Buckner Terrace. This is a largely black and Hispanic, lower-middle to middle-income community. We’ll be seeing this one pop up again.

For unfilled precincts that actually outperformed filled ones, we again see middle- and upper-middle income communities. This suggests that income serves as a stronger indicator for voting in local elections, rather than whether or not your precinct has a precinct chair. Let’s hang on to that for a moment.

November 2025 election

Overall turnout

Dallas County saw a 16.31% voter turnout during this past November’s constitutional amendment election. For the top five communities that turned out its voters, we see many of the usual suspects:

Sunnyvale: 29.24%
Richardson: 25.74%
DeSoto: 21.72%
Far North Dallas: 21.51%
Sachse: 20.75%

And the bottom five:

South Dallas: 10.10%
Balch Springs: 8.85%
Piedmont: 8.82%
Kleberg-Rylie: 8.38%
Pleasant Grove: 8.27%

Again, for the top five, it’s middle- or upper-middle class communities that care about voting.

For the bottom five, it’s the opposite. In fact, Piedmont, the community that offered a glimmer of hope during the November 2024 presidential election for finishing in the top five for precinct chairs turning out their neighbors at much higher rates, finished just a year later in a smaller election near the bottom of the list in overall turnout.

Next, let’s look at the the top five whose filled precincts outperformed its unfilled:

Lake Highlands: 10.95%
Far North Dallas: 9.12%
Buckner Terrace: 8.51%
Southwest Dallas: 8.42%
Far East Dallas: 7.53%

And yet again, middle- and upper-middle income communities appear. Except, again, Buckner Terrace.

As far as the bottom five are concerned, where unfilled precincts fared better than filled:

Rowlett: -1.11%
Cedar Hill: -1.62%
Sachse: -2.17%
Addison: -3.51%
Coppell: -5.29%

And what do you know, all middle- or upper-middle income communities.

This suggests that, just like the May 2025 election, communities with money have more time to think about voting, regardless of whether or not their precincts have precinct chairs.

Democratic turnout

Determining Democratic turnout for this election required some executive decision-making. As I noted in the post in which I delved into this election at length, the Dallas County Democratic Party made recommendations for each of the 17 propositions, but not every Democrat agreed with them. So I came up with a calculation to cut through that noise. As it turns out, Democrats at large in Dallas County tended to agree with each other about which propositions to vote for and against, regardless of party guidance.

Here are the top five communities in which Democratic precinct chairs convinced their neighbors to vote for progressive propositions:

Buckner Terrace: 0.0271
Lancaster & Glenn Heights: 0.0265
Far North Dallas: 0.0165
Cedar Hill: 0.0164
Kiest Park: 0.0145

The values assigned to the communities are more proprietary calculations than they are actual percentages. The importance here is the list of communities.

Middle- and upper-middle income communities appear here, with Buckner Terrace grabbing the top spot.

Finally, here are the bottom five:

Sachse: -0.0028
West Dallas: -0.0038
The Hills: -0.0103
DeSoto: -0.0154
Northwest Dallas: -0.0176

For this list, you’ll notice higher-income communities and Democratic strongholds. Sachse and DeSoto, although on opposite ends of the political spectrum, have the money to not worry about whether or not they have precinct chairs in order to visit the ballot. The Hills, West Dallas, and Northwest Dallas, even though they may not appear in every top five, still contribute large percentages of its registered voters to Democratic causes.

Conclusion

So, what does this all mean?

The data confirms that precinct chairs matter mainly in higher-turnout presidential elections and established blue communities, boosting both overall and Democratic turnout. However, their impact is significantly muted in off-year elections and lower-income communities, where income appears to be a stronger turnout indicator.

And because of that, we need to more intelligently direct our efforts toward different kinds of communities. As I stated after the November 2025 election, we should essentially devise a two-pronged approach to organizing: a short-term sprint that prioritizes middle- and upper-middle income Democratic strongholds, and a long-term marathon that focuses on many of the communities that appeared on today’s lists.

I should make it clear: Lack of voter engagement, especially in off years and especially in communities that enjoy reasonable levels of filled precincts, is not the fault of precinct chairs. This post’s data, along with data from previous posts, demonstrates the consistent, underwhelming nature of the party’s lack of organizational intentionality.

We need leadership from the top to not just recruit new precinct chairs, but to recruit a whole new band of allies under our big tent. Those allies are the grassroots organizations and organizers — the ones that don’t necessarily even associate with the Democratic Party — that have been doing the work that matters most to people’s everyday lives and gaining little attention from the party.

We must zero in on relationship-building in lower-income communities by supporting local, non-political grassroots organizations and addressing everyday needs to build trust and constant engagement.

Imagine, say, if we conducted more attention toward communities like Piedmont and Buckner Terrace? These are ones that, based on the data, already display potential, but need an extra push from the Democratic Party. The work we put in now will pay dividends in the future.

Absent this intentional, two-pronged shift in strategy, we should expect these same, underwhelming data patterns to repeat in every November election for years to come.