why did Humphrey do so (relatively) well in Texas in 1968?

[freepcrusher]

This is something I've always been fascinated by looking at election maps. It seemed at the time that Texas, out of any of the southern states, had the largest "bloc" of liberal voters in comparison to the rest of the south.

What's interesting is that Wallace wasn't that strong in the state compared to other southern states and there were certain pockets where Humphrey won an outright majority of the votes including: Central Texas (Bell, Williamson, Milam, Robertson etc) and in general the old 11th district; a pocket of counties in the west central part of the state such as Hardeman, Foard, Cottle, Haskell, Throckmorton etc and all of South Texas (Corpus Christi, Brownsville, Laredo, McAllen).

There were also the cities, which compared to other southern states, were more loyally Democrat. Humphrey won the [city of] San Antonio with around 70 percent of the vote and won the 8th district (northern and eastern sides of Houston) with 54 percent.

[freepcrusher]

An acquaintance who was a kid in Texas in the '80s once said that her teacher used to tell her that Texas was a Democratic state and California was a Republican state.

Which was true at the time, of course.

for Texas yes but California not really. Both Texas and California were really swing states at the national level, and democrat at the local level. Throughout much of the 70s and 80s, they both had a split senate delegation with Cranston and Bentsen and then Tower/Gramm/Hayakawa/Wilson. CA was probably more republican at the gubernatorial level having elected Reagan and Deukemukijan while Bill Clements was the only republican governor of Texas during that era.

At the congressional level, CA usually had a majority democrat delegation, usually around 60 percent of the seats. In Texas OTOH, the democrats always had at least 2/3 of the U.S. House seats. In the legislative level, California usually had between 55-60% of the legislative offices while Texas often had 65-70% democrat majorities.

The main reason is that areas like Eastern Ventura County, Orange County, much of San Diego, and parts of the San Gabriel Valley made up a larger % of the statewide vote at the time. Texas had comparable areas like West Houston and North Dallas that were just as republican, but didn't make up that much of the electorate.