Talk Elections

Clinton-42
Trump-32
Johnson- 9
Stein- 2

"When the poll considered only likely voters, Clinton's lead slipped to 9 percentage points. In the survey's pool of extremely likely voters, though, the race is firmly within the margin of error, with Clinton at 43 percent and Trump at 39 percent."



http://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/Clinton-leads-Trump-by-10-in-Harris-County-poll-9239737.php?cmpid=twitter-desktop

Looks like if Hillary loses and Texas keeps tightening..that the next Democratic President have a great shot at Texas.

Naturally, these large D trends will observe the boundaries of Safe D/R states, since Trump will win the lottery and most swing states will magically trend R, allowing him to win while losing the PV by several points.

http://m.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_michael_barone/going_out_on_a_limb_romney_beats_obama_handily

How will he govern/rule?

These numbers help confirm multiple recent polls showing Texas much tighter than most of us and pundits would have imagined.

Additionally, the state is under court order to notify voters that the stringent voter ID requirements no longer apply.

Although Texas is not anything close to a tossup state, these are the types of margins that Dems need from Harris county, combined with increased support in the Houston suburbs (As well as the other metro areas) to make this state more competitive not only in Presidential elections, but in statewide elections as well.

It is actually unprecedented (At least since 1964) to see a Democrat likely winning Harris by 10 points.

#AngryMexicanAmericans

No wonder Clinton is opening offices down there and Kaine is making a visit

She has a strong shot at flipping Fort Bend County neighboring Harris.

I just looked up its population.  4.3 million!  That must be the most populous county in Texas, maybe one of the most populous in the United States. 

If we assume that 2.2 million of them are voting, then that's 924000 for Clinton, 704000 for Trump.  220 thousand-vote lead in Harris County alone.  Fairly significant.

Assuming you are joking.... ;)

Too many other fires to fight right now for Team Clinton, considering that despite a massive overwhelming airwar in swing states that Trump is on the verge of cracking "The Firewall".

Only reason for a Dem to go to Texas at this point, is for campaign donations, considering there aren't any downballots that could be aided. Clinton hasn't even been to MO, where the Dems have an outside shot of picking up a Senate seat....

Turnout in Harris County was only 1.2 million in the last 2 presidential elections so there's no way you're seeing 2.2 million votes out of there...Maybe 1.4 million if there is a big turnout

Absolutely agreed....

Now the problem with "Trumpism" is that he risking completely unraveling all of the lessons that the Republican Party learned after Cali and Prop 189 back in the early '90s.

The Texas and Tejas Republican Party learned that lesson, and I took a shot with my wife during that Republican debate when Rick Perry stood up for Texas values, and defended a multicultural Texas against the haters.

Trump is the engineer running the train off the rails, and could likely single-handily turning Texas from the deepest Republican large state towards a tossup state, and creating a California 2.0 for decades.

Clinton will win Harris but I will eat my own hat if she wins by +10 or more

That's also part of the key, as I posted on other Texas related polling threads awhile back. Flipping Fort Bend won't add a ton of votes on the margin, but is significant as the largest center of Asian-American voters in the state (Sugarland), as well as demographic growth in places like Pearland, and combined with a dramatic increase in total Dem margins in Harris starts to tilt the board in this Metro Area.

The key is Montgomery County.... wealthy White educated voters living in The Woodlands, and frequently transplants from Northern States.... This county typically goes 80% Republican and there is a huge bank of votes in this suburban county.... The Texas state polling numbers appear to show the state in high single digits for Trump, and defection of Anglo Republican suburban voters in the Houston, DFW, Austin, and SA metro areas are likely a major reason for these decreased margins.

3rd most populous county in the entire country.

Metro Houston is the 5th largest Metro area in the country and the fastest growing...

Lived out there until just recently, it is a massively sprawling and extremely diverse part of the country, and although Anglos are a minority within Harris County and a relatively small majority in Metro, this is a state with extremely low voter turnout.

Anglos and African-Americans vote at relatively high numbers, and Latino have a much lower voter turnout and registration rate.

Additionally, working-class Latinos in Texas typically vote 80/20 Democrat, but with extremely small turnout levels, and Middle-Class Latinos vote more like 55/45 Democrat in a Presidential election, and much more Republican at the statewide level, and represent a disproportionate share of the Latino vote.

Your estimated voter turnout and registration is way off, but yeah bottom line Harris County could well be more like a Philly or Cleveland type city where Democrats could create a 200k plurality that will go a long way towards making the state competitive.

Truth.... if elections were more competitive turnout would be higher throughout the state, as well as Harris County.

If the GOP can't win Texas by more than 10 this year they probably won't be able to for a long time.

Team Clinton actually just opened up an office in El Paso (joining Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio) and Kaine did an event today in Houston

Awesome!!!

Doesn't look like they are making a play for Texas for obvious reasons, but rather are trying to build a future coalition in the great state of Texas.

I have been hoping for awhile that the national campaign would throw a few dollars into Texas to expand voter registration, turnout, and enthusiasm, and apparently the campaign is following that course.

Meanwhile here's an old man song from a native son of Texas that is 100% non-partisan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvu4nKdLWX8

Trump is a perfect storm of awful for Texas.  The state is going purple, but not fast enough go for a Democrat to win anytime soon.  A state that's 30% New Mexico and 70% Alabama is still safe R.

That could cause issues for some of the Republicans in swing districts in the state house. I know there are at least a couple of them there.

At the least I say they won't get above a 15 point win. I can't see the GOP winning Texas by more then 20 anymore. Especially if their Hispanic numbers stay low like they are currently. It's not just the white women that are angry. ;)

Not sure I totally agree with the NM/AL breakdown.

Reality is that Texas is actually more like 5 or 6 states smashed together, with extreme variations between the different regions, but combined with a "founding myth/narrative".

I didn't realize until I lived in Texas how powerful the foundation myth of Texas is, from the educational structure that talks about Sam Houston and his history fighting against discrimination against Native Peoples, opposition to the war of succession against the North, and the embracing of the Tejano culture as part of the foundation myth of Texas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXqSa1gRdb4

Not really surprising. Trump is such a terrible fit for Houston.

I didn't know whether to put this poll in its own thread or in this one, but the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Baldwin Wallace did two polls of Cuyahoga County.

Baldwin Wallace found a 54.0% to 21.3% lead for Clinton with just over 10% going to the third parties and another 14% undecided. The Plain Dealer did a poll which pushed the undecideds hard and found Clinton leading 65-26. The first scenario leads to a Clinton loss in OH; the second scenario is a Clinton win in OH with Obama 2012 turnout. They also note that Trump is lagging all previous Republican nominees in Cleveland by raw percentages

http://www.cleveland.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/09/hillary_clinton_leads_donald_t.html

That's awfully low.  Lower than I'd have guessed.  It's only 28% of the population.  I looked it up, in 2008 and 2012, 1.171 and 1.185 million voters voted, respectively.  The actual number of registered voters in Harris County is 2062792, which is about 49% of the county population.

For comparison, I looked up lancaster county.  There are 323799 registered voters as of September 19.  The current estimated county population is about 536624.  That means that just over 60% of the population is registered to vote.  I had assumed Harris would be lower, but I had no idea what the actual numbers were for either county before I looked them up today. 

Just for fun, here is the breakdown of registered voters for Lancaster County as of September 19:

Republican 168739
Democrat 104587
Other 50743
Total 323799

It's interesting to note the changes from Democrat to Republican in 2016 alone:  4570
and from Republican to Democrat in 2016 alone:  3943

I assume that such large numbers were due to the wild primaries this year.  Normally, by the time it gets to PA it's a fait accompli, uninteresting and pre-decided, but this year neither the Democrats nor the Republicans had it settled by April. 

I couldn't find a breakdown of registration by party for Harris County.  Maybe they don't do it that way in Texas.  You can look up voter registration by precinct in Harris county, but it seems tedious and all you get is name, address, and the last time that person voted, but not a political party.  Also, it says this in ALL CAPS on the Harris County website where you can look stuff up:  "IT IS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE TO USE VOTER REGISTRATION INFORMATION IN CONNECTION WITH ADVERTISING OR PROMOTING COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OR SERVICES."

Both increased voter registration and turnout are key to future Democratic Party success in Texas in general, with Harris County being a lynchpin of any strategy to making Texas competitive again in both Federal and Statewide races.

Unfortunately, the resources required would cost a ton of money, in a state where the Democratic Party has virtually ceased to exist as a statewide party, and no outside organizations have ponied up the money in pursuit of those two endeavors.

What is fascinating, is that despite extreme lack of resources, that Harris County is looking to be on track for the highest performance for a Democratic candidate since at least 1964 (Haven't yet been able to look at the '64 margins).

That being said, Harris County is key to any major improvement in Democratic Party performance in Texas.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mapping-the-changing-face-of-the-lone-star-state/

Everything costs money, but with 4.3 million people concentrated in less than 1800 square miles, one need only rely on one communications media market buyout to reach a huge audience.  For either the GOP or the Democrats, reaching the voters of Harris County should be a priority.  It represents about 17% of the state population, and it votes in appallingly low numbers.  Clearly, voters--and there are many potential voters there--need some motivation.  It would seem to me to be an obvious place to put some of the millions of dollars that campaigns typically raise.  I looked into it today, and it seems that both parties ignore the media market there, and neither have much of a ground game there.  I'm very much against identity politicking because I think division is bad for everyone in the long run, as we have seen in South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, etc., etc., so I'm not going to argue about this ethnic group or that being easily led one faction or another, and I appreciate the fact that you (for the most part) haven't been pushing that sort of stuff either.  People are people, but the people of Harris County are not fully exploiting the democratic system.  Given that they are 17% of the 2nd-largest pot of electoral votes, it strikes me as odd that both parties ignore that media market.  Part of that, of course, is an artifact of our bizarre system of electing presidents.  Texas for about a hundred years was a guaranteed Democrat bastion, and then, for about 30 years, was a guaranteed Republican bastion.  It shouldn't be like that.  Such a large county in such a large state ought to be one of the places where elections are fought out, for better or worse.

Angus--- your post hurt my eyes because you didn't breakup sentences and paragraphs into a more readable format.

But yes--- you are absolutely right that the largest metro area in the second largest state (And one of the largest cities and metro areas in the US) has been ignored for decades by both political parties is a national disgrace.

Houston is the 4th largest city in the United States (2.3 Million) and the 5th largest and fastest growing Metro area in the US (6.7 Million).

Texas in recent years has become such a one-party state that voter registration and turnout levels, which were already horrible compared to most other states, has fallen even lower.

As I stated earlier, it will require a significant investment in resources, combined with better messaging, improved candidate selection, etc before Democrats will be able to make the state truly competitive.

That would mean total voters would double from 2012. Not too likely.

There is no party registration. You can only vote in one primary (they might even be in separate buildings, or at least rooms). You are considered to affiliated for the rest of the election year, but that in practice means that you can't switch parties for the runoff. Officially, everyone is cleansed of their partisan alignment on January 1 of the odd-numbered years.

In 2016, Republican voters outnumbered Democratic voters 3:2 in Harrison County.

Trump, Clinton, and Sanders are from New York City (Youtube) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX2AyjVrrck)

And who do you think got most of those votes? It certainly couldn't have been native Texan Ted Cruz... ::)

I'm pretty sure that Ted Cruz is not a native of the Lone Star State.  I read somewhere that he is a native of the great state of Canada.  Perhaps that was your point.  :)

jimrtex, so every one is unaffiliated until he votes?  Okay, that would explain why it wasn't easy to find party registrations in Harris County.  I did see somewhere that in 2012 Romney voters outnumbered Obama voters.  In fact, Dave Leip's US Election Atlas has that info.  I actually like that situation.  In Pennsylvania, you have to pick a party and pick it early.  Four weeks before the primary election, or something like that.  On the other side of the spectrum is Iowa, where there's same-day registration.  I lived in Iowa for five years.  There, you can decide whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or a Libertarian or a Socialists or whatever on the day of the caucus.  Of course, the day of the caucus is in early January and it's usually a day when the high temperature is about 20 degrees Farhenheit and there is about two feet of snow outside, and you have to show up early for a good parking spot and stay there for many hours.  I guess ou can't have everything. 

Skills & Chance----

You made me laugh again, but only because you spoke some fundamental truths within that pithy phrase...

Now within that, you are leaving DFW out of the mix, as well as El Paso, but it does seem to match the Houston/ EastTex mixed with some of the Austin/SA regions of the state. :)

Context: Obama defeated Romney here 49.4 to 49.3 while Ted Cruz won the county narrowly. This is not the sort of place Republicans should be losing badly.

Frankly, Clinton being up by this much here makes me think Dallas Co will be stronger, Tarrant will be within single-digits... it pretty much speaks to a mid-single digit lead for Trumplestiltskin (5-7)

This reminds me of an article that I read when I first moved to Texas, and naturally my first instinct was to buy a subscription to Texas Monthly, which is the best magazine focused on everything Texas, including politics, statewide issues, cultural/entertainment/food, and many other items...

http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/the-cities-issue/

Texas is now fundamentally an overwhelmingly an urban and suburban state, despite the "foundation myths" and history that still exemplified Texas exceptionalism, that is now inclusive of the contribution of Tejanos and African-Americans, that goes way back to the days when a founding father Sam Houston was stumping the state to encourage Texas to vote against succession and support for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Although, I don't believe that Tarrant will flip this cycle, it will be much closer than usual, along with dramatic decrease in Republican margins in the suburbs of Houston and elsewhere.

Fort Bend County will flip this year.... it has been a county on the line for awhile, and Asian-Americans (Heavily Vietnamese-Americans) will trend towards Clinton, at the same time as upper-middle class suburban voters in Sugarland move away from extreme Republican margins.

Same patterns in Montgomery County (The Woodlands/Conroe), and you take this same pattern and move it into the burbs of DFW, Round Rock (Wealthy Anglo Austin Exurbs), and then take it 70 miles down the highway into S.A (San Antonio for those that haven't spent time in Texas), and this state will likely trend much more Dem than most on this forum suspect.

WestTex actually had one of the biggest swings towards Obama between '08 and '12, and something tells me that both overall turnout and margins will be higher this year in both WestTex and SouthTex with Trump at the top of the ticket...

Houston is like Chicago.


Ted Cruz is from Houston, that's kind of an asterisk victory.

Historically, primaries in Texas were conducted by the political parties, and in a legal sense, they still are. They are also conducted by county political parties, so that if a party is not organized in a county, there is no primary in that county. Political parties also conduct party conventions, with a hierarchical system like in Iowa - precinct, county, and state. The precinct conventions are held on primary election night. Until about the mid-20th century, the Republicans rarely had primaries (the most successful parties must have primaries; medium successful parties have a choice between primaries or conventions; and small and new parties nominate by convention). Texas currently has four parties, the Republicans and Democrats nominate by primary, while the Libertarian and Greens nominate by convention.

Back in the day, the Democratic primary was held on a Saturday (in July or August), and after the votes were counted, the precinct convention would commence. Since there was effectively only one party, it was typical for more votes to be cast in the primary than the general election. If no candidate had a majority in the primary, it would be decided in the runoff. A runoff was quite normal for important races such as governor, since challengers weren't really running against the party standard-bearer but rather simply a previous winner.

Because the party was paying for the primary, they would want to control costs, so they would use paper ballots, and the election workers would be volunteering their time for their party. If there were two primaries, they had different polling places. If they were in the same building, it would be preferred that they had separate outside entrances. If there are signs identifying the entrances, either both had to have a party name or symbol, or neither had a party name or symbol.

The restriction on participation is that you can only participate in the nominating activities of one party. The pledge on the ballot doesn't say anything about political fealty, but only that you had not, and will not participate in the nominating activities of another party.

Primaries use a parallel structure without direct involvement of the state or county government. Filing is with either the state party chair or county party chair (independents file with the SOS or county clerk). The state party chair then informs the county party chairs of the candidates for statewide or district election so that the county chairs can prepare ballots. The county party would hold the primary, canvass the results. The county party then informs the county clerk who the party nominated for the general election. They would also pass their canvass on to the state party, which would conduct the statewide canvass, and then inform the SOS who they nominated. The parties would also determine if they had to have a runoff primary or not, which are only held in areas where there is an active race.

But in practice, there is more state and county involvement. The state pays for primaries, and county parties don't own voting machines, don't know how to program them, and don't know how to count votes. So they rent machines from the counties, who also programs them and count the votes. It used to be that the state would write a check to the county parties for the primary, who would in turn pay the counties. But after one party treasurer embezzled the money, the state now issues a voucher which the party gives to the county, who can then get the money from the state. In another county, the county chair disappeared (literally). There is a party account in a bank, that because of banking laws, can not even be determined if it has any money in it.

Early voting is also conducted by the counties, and most voters vote early. So the party chairs also tell the counties who to put on the ballot. When you vote early, you go to the polling place and state which party primary you wish to vote in. On election day, you would go to a party-specific polling place and vote. On election night, county parties are required to report results every 15 minutes to the SOS. This really isn't a burden, since the actual counting is being done by the county election officials who have the same reporting requirement on general election day.

Because Harris County is so evenly divided, and because there is straight-ticket voting there is a concern that if voters don't vote for Trump or Clinton that they will either not mark the straight ticket device or not continue to vote down ballot. There are 49 partisan offices on the general election ballot. A few percentage points either way will wipe out dozens of judges. This is likely the real reason for Cruz's endorsement of Trump.

Will Rogers: “Fort Worth is where the West begins and Dallas is where the East peters out.” (http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2010/12/where-west-begins-and-east-peters-out.html)