Emails, Allison Heinrich, campaign manager, Huey Rey Fischer campaign, Feb. 9 and 15, 2016

On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 2:16 PM, Selby, Gardner (CMG-Austin):

Can you guide me on how you reached your conclusions about legislators and the youthful share of the electorate?

Thanks,

wgs

W. Gardner Selby

PolitiFact Texas

Austin American-Statesman

6:17 p.m.

Feb. 9, 2016

The conclusions regarding the age of legislators was drawn from the Legislative Library of Texas' Member Statistics page (link here for your reference). Specifically, the conclusions were drawn from the below graph. In addition, the disclaimer notes that HD 13 and HD 123 are not included given special elections were underway to fill those seats. However, HD 13 is currently held by Leighton Schubert (R-Caldwell), who is 33 (as of the date the below chart was made he would have been 32). Similarly, HD 123 is held by Diego Bernal (D-San Antonio), who is 37/38 (extrapolated from this San Antonio Express News article).

Membership Statistics for the 84th Legislature

* Gender, party affiliation, and age calculations are based on the membership as of the first day of session: 01/13/2015. House Districts 13 and 123 are not included due to pending special elections.

As for the youthful share of the electorate I presume you mean the 25% number? The total "Voting Age Population" is pulled from the election results page on the Secretary of State's website for the 2014 Gubernatorial, and is 18,915,297 persons. The 18 - 29 years of age portion of the electorate comes from a number previously provided to me by the Department of State Health Services. It is also for 2014 for consistency, and is 4,718,275 persons. They note that they used the website of the Texas State Data Center for the numbers and that they use a model based on 2000 - 2010 rates of migration. Using those two numbers, 18 - 29 year olds may be derived as constituting 24.94% of the electorate. I have seen millennials defined roughly as those under 35 as well as those under 30. If memory serves for electoral purposes I have used age 30 as a divider after seeing data sets defined as such by the Annette Strauss Institute's Texas Civic Health Index.

Allison

Allison G. Heinrich

Campaign Manager

8:23 p.m.

Below is the text of an email from Nick Dauster, Nicholas.Dauster@dshs.state.tx.us. I have also attached the data file I was sent. As I mentioned in my last email, the use of 2014 here was to match up with the 2014 Gubernatorial. Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Allison

###

Allison,

Thank you for inquiring about the population of 18-29 year olds in Texas in 2014.

The Department of State Health Services (DSHS) demographic staff used the website of the Texas State Data Center [http://txsdc.utsa.edu/Data/TPEPP/Projections/ ] for the 2014 numbers.

The 2014 projected population aged 18-29 in Texas = 4,718,275.

This estimate uses a model based on 2000-2010 rates of migration.

Regards,

Nick Dauster, Director

Government Affairs Unit

Center for Policy and External Affairs

Department of State Health Services

5:34 p.m.

Feb. 15, 2016

There is no consensus as to what a millennial is -- that being said, the majority of definitions encompass some stretch of folks born in the early/mid-80s through folks born in the 90s (link here). The other common breakdown is 18 - 29/30 or 18 - 35.

Our definition of a millennial is 18 - 29, as has been used here by NPR for example. It was also the breakdown that has been used in political research, for example, by the Annette Strauss Center in their Civic Health Index.

Huey DOB: 6/24/1992

As for the date of the email I would have to check on specifics but it would have been in June/July of 2015.

Thanks,

Allison