Straight ticket voting in CD22

My first thought when I saw the Chronicle poll showing DeLay at 22% was, "Wait, I bet that more than 22% voted straight ticket Republican in 2004 in CD22. If so, then the Chronicle's poll is kinda nonsense."

I was right. It turns out that 28% of the 2004 CD votes cast were straight ticket Republican votes, while 17% were straight ticket Democratic votes. So, unless 2006 is different than 2004, DeLay beats 22% based on straight ticket votes alone.**

In other words, the Chronicle's poll simply makes no sense on this issue.

Straight ticket R D
Brazoria 10793 5468
Fort Bend 38132 22806
Galveston 4963 8517
Harris 20989 9594
Total 74877 46385

Total votes R D*
Brazoria 18159 11728
Fort Bend 58444 46151
Galveston 9193 12377
Harris 64590 41778
Total 150,386 112,034

[The original version of this post had this data presented nicely in tables. However, Blogger was having some technical issues dealing with the tables, so I had to go to the ugly presentation above.]

There may be other conclusions that can be drawn from this data. If you think of any, let me know.

* In this case, the D is Richard Morrison. The R is Tom DeLay.

**Caveats:
1. If you think that normal straight-ticket Republican voters will want to not vote for DeLay so badly that they don't vote straight ticket, then this might not be true. I frankly doubt this to be true. Voting is a habit, and it's very difficult to break people of their voting habits.
2. If presidential election cycles feature much higher straight ticket voters than off-presidential elections (or if 2004 was simply anomalously high in straight ticket GOP percentage). I don't have any data on this, but I doubt that there is much difference.