For those of you who believe TX will stay a Republican state in the long term, why?

[ProgressiveModerate]

My answer to OP's question is quite simple. If suburban shifts were to continue to the point of TX becoming Dem-leaning, that would also mean Arizona and Georgia being more solidly Dem-leaning, which would mean the GOP having no possible coalition to coming even close to victory presidentially. Which would mean some sort of shift in voter coalitions would have to occur- and it is very difficult to envisage any such coalition which would involve Texas being to the left of the US as a whole.

That argument would be like 10 years ago saying AZ and GA will never flip because then NC and FL will be D-leaning and Rs could never win elections. These things aren’t always 100% correlated and Rs can still make up ground elsewhere, though I agree if TX is D leaning the path to victory for Rs in the EC becomes a lot harder.

[patzer]

These things aren’t always 100% correlated and Rs can still make up ground elsewhere

But where, is the question? I can't think of any remotely viable electoral map which would involve Republicans winning sans Texas.

[ProgressiveModerate]

These things aren’t always 100% correlated and Rs can still make up ground elsewhere

But where, is the question? I can't think of any remotely viable electoral map which would involve Republicans winning sans Texas.

For TX to become a swing stage, it doesn’t mean GOP has to have a realistic electoral path without TX. We saw something simillar with Florida during the Obama years - FL was a genuine swing state Presidentially and was basically a must-win for Republicans

[patzer]

These things aren’t always 100% correlated and Rs can still make up ground elsewhere

But where, is the question? I can't think of any remotely viable electoral map which would involve Republicans winning sans Texas.

For TX to become a swing stage, it doesn’t mean GOP has to have a realistic electoral path without TX. We saw something simillar with Florida during the Obama years - FL was a genuine swing state Presidentially and was basically a must-win for Republicans

I think it's conceivable that TX becomes a swing state that's only slightly Republican-leaning, but I don't think it'll ever actually end up to the left of the nation as a whole in the foreseeable future.

[Skill and Chance]

These things aren’t always 100% correlated and Rs can still make up ground elsewhere

But where, is the question? I can't think of any remotely viable electoral map which would involve Republicans winning sans Texas.

The Northern WWC votes just like the Southern WWC scenario would work.  Easy GOP sweep of the non-IL Midwest with half of New England being swing states.  This was under serious debate as where we might be heading circa 2017 but has faded away since then,.

[Pres Mike]

Personally, I think the state will become closer because of trends and growth

But I don't think Democrats will win in 2024 or 2028.

The sheer gap is just too much. How do you make up 630,000 votes? Trump won Tennessee by 700,000 votes. No one is realistically trying to flip that state despite Nashville growing so fast

[ProgressiveModerate]

Personally, I think the state will become closer because of trends and growth

But I don't think Democrats will win in 2024 or 2028.

The sheer gap is just too much. How do you make up 630,000 votes? Trump won Tennessee by 700,000 votes. No one is realistically trying to flip that state despite Nashville growing so fast

TX has like 30 million people; a 600k gap isn’t that big when you take in context how large the state is. By your logic Trump only won WY by only just over 100k in 2020 so both sides should be taking it seriously.

Between 2016 and 2020 alone, Biden increased his raw vote out of Dallas and Travis counties by ~200k votes.

[Pres Mike]

Personally, I think the state will become closer because of trends and growth

But I don't think Democrats will win in 2024 or 2028.

The sheer gap is just too much. How do you make up 630,000 votes? Trump won Tennessee by 700,000 votes. No one is realistically trying to flip that state despite Nashville growing so fast

TX has like 30 million people; a 600k gap isn’t that big when you take in context how large the state is. By your logic Trump only won WY by only just over 100k in 2020 so both sides should be taking it seriously.

Between 2016 and 2020 alone, Biden increased his raw vote out of Dallas and Travis counties by ~200k votes.

I mean its possible. Someone in this forum did some math. Even if Texas had a 80% voter turnout, the margins wouldn't have changed that much

[ProgressiveModerate]

Personally, I think the state will become closer because of trends and growth

But I don't think Democrats will win in 2024 or 2028.

The sheer gap is just too much. How do you make up 630,000 votes? Trump won Tennessee by 700,000 votes. No one is realistically trying to flip that state despite Nashville growing so fast

TX has like 30 million people; a 600k gap isn’t that big when you take in context how large the state is. By your logic Trump only won WY by only just over 100k in 2020 so both sides should be taking it seriously.

Between 2016 and 2020 alone, Biden increased his raw vote out of Dallas and Travis counties by ~200k votes.

I mean its possible. Someone in this forum did some math. Even if Texas had a 80% voter turnout, the margins wouldn't have changed that much

Would be curious to see this math - it seems like equalized turnout patterns in TX tend to favor Dems - from my calculations equalized turnout on 2020 numbers would’ve lead to close to a statistical tie. Also just logically this makes sense because the GOP has spent more money than Dems trying to activate voters in recent years - in 2020 for instance Rs spent 250 million on trying to register and activate voters in key regions like RGV while Dems spent next to nothing. GOP def saw the results of that money but it still wasn’t enough to keep the state from trending left.


One thing that is clear to me though is TX is a low turnout state and both sides have quite a lot of untapped voters.


A huge question mark is how non-voting Hispanics lean; many Hispanic parts of TX are *very* low turnout.

[Dan the Roman]

I think Texas needs to be distinguished from Georgia. Georgia/NC, even Florida are "leaning" states because they feature high-turnout, polarized electorates. The result is that even a narrow advantage is iron-clad. The reason people read so much into 51-49 victories in these states is their consistency.

The step for Texas might not be for it to become Democratic-leaning, but winnable for Democrats. Since 1994, it has quite simply been mathematically impossible for a Democrat to win a statewide election, no matter the candidates or circumstances. There are reasons to believe that may change with trends.

While Texas is seeing a growth in the type of voter that flipped Atlanta, none of Texas' cities function like the Eastern Bloc-level vote banks for Democrats you see in the northeast or West Coast. Even Austin's growth has a large tech element which is well to the left of the current Texas GOP.

So its less clear to me that Texas will see a "vote blue no matter what" majority in the foreseeable future. The coalition will have too many moving parts.

[oldtimer]

We have been through this before.

1.Texas is massive and flat, so can assimilate more.
2.Texas Cities are built differenty, a Texas suburb isn't similar to an Atlanta one.
3.Texas rural population has mostly kept up with population growth.
4.Texas is cheaper, so it has more poor and middle class people.
5.Texas has a large mining sector.
6.Texas climate is mostly sub-tropical.

Put them all together and you see why Texas has shown little cultural shift over many decades.

Compare it with California:

1. California is sandwiched between mountains and the sea.
2. California's Urban planning is hellish.
3. California's rural population has declined.
4. California is very expensive, so it has few middle class people.
5. California relies on Tech companies.
6. California's climate is unstable mediterrenian.

Texas is more like a typical Southern American State, while California is like a typical Southern European State.

Some responses:

1. Don't really see why this would make TX stay more R; there are plenty of places where there are extreme political divides despite little or no geographic barriers.

2. Don't really get what it means by "they're built differently" and why this would affect partisanship. If anything, TX suburbs tend to be built denser than Atlanta suburbs which one assumes might help Dems.

3. This is literally false by any metric of analyzing "rural" counties.

4. The point is TX is becoming more expensive and increasingly has more of the college educated types favorable to Dems. This might be true now, but the point is it's changing.

5. Sure, but again, that mining sector is shrinking as a share of the state's economy.

6. Climate doesn't inherently affect partisanship

For thousands of years it has been observed that surroundings affect what people do, it has even been a subject of famous movies:

So of course the entire Pacific coast from Anchorage to the tip of Baha in Mexico has a liberal tilt, and of course Florida Man and Queensland Man exist.

You can call it the Fog vs Humid Heat divide for simplicity.

[Samof94]

Personally, I think the state will become closer because of trends and growth

But I don't think Democrats will win in 2024 or 2028.

The sheer gap is just too much. How do you make up 630,000 votes? Trump won Tennessee by 700,000 votes. No one is realistically trying to flip that state despite Nashville growing so fast

TX has like 30 million people; a 600k gap isn’t that big when you take in context how large the state is. By your logic Trump only won WY by only just over 100k in 2020 so both sides should be taking it seriously.

Between 2016 and 2020 alone, Biden increased his raw vote out of Dallas and Travis counties by ~200k votes.

NH is a small state in comparison and a few thousand votes to back W was a big deal back then.

[Bush did 311]

My answer to OP's question is quite simple. If suburban shifts were to continue to the point of TX becoming Dem-leaning, that would also mean Arizona and Georgia being more solidly Dem-leaning, which would mean the GOP having no possible coalition to coming even close to victory presidentially. Which would mean some sort of shift in voter coalitions would have to occur- and it is very difficult to envisage any such coalition which would involve Texas being to the left of the US as a whole.

If the parties realigned along economic left/social right vs economic right/social left, it's possible to see the parties trading some of their core states. Dems gain Texas but shed VA, MD, NJ, CT perhaps.

[wnwnwn]

I don't think do, but the reason would be that after Trump, the GOP will go back to its suburban oriented ways, while democrats focus on getting factory workers on Ohio and NC.
Also, democrats could either pass the GND at some point or become the pro nuclear, with the effects on political dynamics in favor of the Texas GOP.

The issue with Texas is that economic progressivism doesn't seem the best sell there. Even if all oil workers enter a lefty union, the very pro oil GOP will keep appealing to them.
Outside of that, I think that economic conservativism will stop being that influencial there at some point, if the other side knows hoe to play ball (sadly, they don't seem to knoe much).

[Skill and Chance]

I don't think there needs to be any deep ideological story here.  If it happens, the answer will simply be Texas Hispanics assimilating toward white Evangelical culture.