After the dust settled following the March 5th Primary, all party nomination races on local ballots had been decided, except for one: The Republican Party primary election for 108th District Court Judge was sent to a runoff between Sam Brown Silverman and Tim Pirtle.

The fact that the race went to a runoff surprised few, given the fact that four strong candidates were vying for the nomination. Still, even as results began to be reported, it was not immediately clear who would make it to a runoff. On election night, as results trickled in, the top spots changed several times.

While Silverman and Pirtle made it to the runoff, the two actually lost when it came to mail-in ballots. Joe Marr Wilson earned 31.90% of the mail-in vote, while Pamela Sirmon earned 25.97%. Had only these ballots been counted, we would have had a very different runoff, as Silverman earned only 22.29% of those votes and top-finisher Pirtle came in last with 19.84%.

On election night, though, the first results reported were early votes. Of those, Pirtle and Wilson commanded a lead, with 26.95% going to Wilson and 26.85% going to Pirtle. Silverman was close behind with 25.16%, while 21.04% went to Sirmon.

While the early voting and mail in numbers seemed to indicate that the runoff may be between Pirtle and Wilson, Silverman was able to turn out enough voters on Election Day to overcome Wilson’s lead. Wilson earned only 22.47% of Election Day votes, while Silverman earned 27.43%. With most of the votes in the election being cast on Election Day, this was enough to knock Wilson to third place. Coming in first both overall and with Election Day voters was Tim Pirtle, who earned 31.46% of Election Day ballots. Despite a strong showing with mail-in ballots, Sirmon earned the fewest Election Day votes with 18.64%.

In the end, Pirtle earned 28.71%. Silverman earned 26.11%, Wilson earned 25.04%, and Sirmon earned 20.15%, per final results from Potter County.

The Amarillo Pioneer also obtained final precinct-level results for the race.

We first looked at turnout by precinct, as some precincts saw many more voters than others. The highest turnout precinct was 324, which includes Amarillo’s Westcliff neighborhood, as well as Bishop Hills. In that precinct, 1,181 ballots were cast. Coming in a close second was 323, where 960 cast ballots in the race. That precinct is mostly north of Amarillo and includes River Road. 321, which includes Bushland, wasn’t far behind, with 846 votes cast.

Precincts 121-126, which mostly comprise the southwestern portion of Amarillo within Potter County, also had strong turnouts, ranging from 724 in the Wolflin-neighborhood precinct 123 to 325 in precinct 126, which is bounded by Interstate 40, Western Street, Georgia Street, and Southwest 6th/Bushland Boulevard.

Turnout was lowest in the 200 and 400 precincts. The highest turnout in the 200s precincts was precinct 224, where only 229 votes were cast. That precinct, which is bounded by Interstate 40 to the north, stretches from Intestate 27 to the eastern portion of Loop 335. The highest turnout in the 400s precincts was precinct 422, which is centered on Amarillo Boulevard northwest of downtown. In that precinct, only 182 votes were cast.

Overall, the lowest number of votes cast in a single precinct was precinct 427, where only 22 people cast a ballot in the 108th District Court race.

A similar story is revealed when looking at the number of ballots cast in relation to the number of registered voters. One notable shift is that precinct 322, which had the lowest number of votes recorded of the 300s precincts with only 66 ballots cast, had the highest turnout in the county in terms of percent of registered voters, with 28.38% having voted in the 108th District Court race.

Having looked at turnout, we then looked at how well each candidate did in each precinct. We first looked at each candidate individually, and created the following maps (the darker colors indicate the labeled candidate had a higher percentage of the vote in each precinct):

Combining the data, we then looked at how big of a lead each candidate had in precincts they won in. (Sirmon did not win any precincts).

What we noticed is that Silverman did best in the northern and eastern portions of the county and did especially well in the northeastern portions of the city. Wilson, who did not make it to a runoff, did best in the western portions of the county, while first-place finisher Pirtle did best in the western portions of town. When looking at the individual candidate maps, it appears Pirtle was a close second in precincts won by Wilson, while Sirmon did best in the northern 323 precinct, though this was not enough to overcome Silverman’s lead.

You can download a spreadsheet with the full precinct-level results by clicking the button below.

108th Precinct Level Results

The runoff election is scheduled for Tuesday, May 28th. Early voting will be from May 20th to May 24th.