Is Texas really turning blue?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I think what we saw in TX this year was akin to what we saw in GA in 2008, where it suddenly lurched pretty substantially toward the Democrats but meandered a bit back in the GOP's direction before slowly continuing to inch toward its future reality. Basically, in both cases we saw Democrats in these states capitalize on what would have otherwise been multiple cycles' worth of gains in one cycle, with an obvious correction following that. As such, it could be another ten years or more before Democrats outright win there.

I definitely wouldn't describe TX as a purple state just yet: let's remember that despite all of the straight-D voters Beto turned out, Abbott still won the Governor's race by more than Rick Perry did in 2010. That underlines just how many voters mainly didn't like Cruz and/or aren't yet willing to punish the GOP up and down the ballot for the sake of Trump.

I am not going to say that is necessarily 100% wrong, but there are some nuances...

In the case of Georgia, in 2008 Democrats had more rural support than Democrats do in TX now. Over the course of the decade, rural whites in GA trended GOP, and that counter-trend against the trend of Metro Atlanta to the Dems has kept GA overall from trending Dem too much/too rapidly.

The situation in TX now, however, is very different in that respect. Republicans are already receiving very pretty close to 100% of the white vote across much of rural TX. There has been a trend of rural TX towards Rs over the past decade, and that has similarly slowed down the overall gradual shift of TX towards Dems that has been driven by the big cities. But at this point, it is pretty much impossible for that rural trend towards Rs to continue in TX, because you just mathematically cannot go above 100% support among a demographic, and Republicans are close to that with rural TX whites.

And this is not only in West TX, but throughout the entirety of rural TX as far as I can tell. Sabine County TX, along the Louisiana border, voted 87% for Cruz. That county is 86% White and 7% Black. Cruz didn't get that 87% by winning the non-white voters. Another example is Red River County, along the Oklahoma border and very near Arkansas too. Red River County voted 78% for Trump and is 73% White (17% Black). Again, Cruz did not do that by winning the Black voters there, but by winning close to 100% of the Whites (probably 90-95% or so). Another example - Robertson County in Central TX, just north of College Station. That voted 69% for Cruz and is 58% White and 21% black. Again, he didn't do that by winning the Black voters (or the Hispanics and other non-whites). And in the case of Robertson County, that is pretty much the most Demosaur part of rural TX that is left. But there is just no Demosaur left there any more. You can literally go through basically every rural TX County, and they will all be like this. You can just look at the demographics and see that in every single one of them, Republicans are basically maxed out - they have to be winning 90-95% of the White vote in these counties at this point. And many/most of these counties have rural white population loss - those that are gaining population are generally only gaining population because of Hispanic growth (with the White population declining).

In the case of Georgia's 2008 shift to the left, the dominant factor there was the incredible African American turnout that Obama was able to inspire. Whereas in the case of TX in 2018, while it is true that turnout was very high for a TX midterm, turnout was still low compared to other states. GA 2008 was a Presidential election, TX 2018 was a midterm.

You mentioned "hordes" of straight ticket Dem voters brought out by Beto in your other post. While there was some of that (particularly in some places, such as Hayes County due to the college student vote and the like), we should be very careful not to exaggerate how much that was the story. The large part of Beto's gains didn't come just from turnout, but from swinging suburban whites. Thus, whereas what was necessary to repeat GA 2008 was to have Presidential-Obama-level turnout and excitement, what is necessary to repeat TX 2018 is more a matter of swinging the suburban whites again. To be sure, suburban whites could swing back, and I would not be surprised if they do in particular when there is a Dem President again. But this is not all that likely at least in 2020 as long as Trump is still around and is still unpopular, and moreover this suburban trend is a long-running nationwide trend. In the case of TX it goes back at least to 2004-2008, so there is reason to think that the general trend will continue.

While I would agree that Dems will still face quite an uphill battle at least in midterm years going forward in TX, there is reason to hope (and reason to think) that turnout will be better in a Presidential year like 2020 than it was in 2018. Despite turnout by young voters and Hispanics being good for a midterm, it was still clearly lower than in 2016 (much less what might potentially be achievable in 2020 if Dems actually invest in TX).

So in the case of GA after 2008, Obama's performance was only replicable to the degree that African American turnout could be so high. That was certainly not achievable in 2010, because it was a midterm, and there was typical drop-off of young voters and black voters. Likewise in 2014. In 2012 and 2016, it was replicated a bit more because it was a Presidential year (albeit not with the same enthusiasm as 2008).

Whereas in TX, Beto only began to tap Texas' turnout potential in 2018. Beto's results are replicable not only by increasing turnout (which should be possible, particularly in Presidential years if there is actual investment in TX) but by riding the trend among suburban whites. And there is no counter-trend of rural Whites swinging to the GOP left to help the Republicans limit the damage.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

And BTW, here is an interesting comparison for those 3 rural TX counties that I picked out, one in South-East TX, one in North-East TX, and one in Central TX:

Red River - 61% Bush '04 ------> 78% Cruz '18

Sabine - 68% Bush '04 ------> 87% Cruz '18

Robertson - 56% Bush '04 ------> 69% Cruz '18

You can literally go through rural TX and pick any county you like, and all will show this same story. I challenge anyone to find any real counterexamples, where Cruz didn't win something close to 100% of the white rural vote, and where Cruz didn't substantially outperform Bush '04 with rural whites. Ironically, probably the closest thing to an example of that would be the ethnic German Hill Country (Kerr County etc), which is basically the only ancestrally REPUBLICAN part of rural TX.



And then, here's the difference statewide:

Statewide - 61% Bush '04 ------> 51% Cruz '18


It was not that long ago that Republicans did not have close to 100% support from rural white Texans. But now they do, so much so that even while Cruz lost 10 points statewide as compared to Bush '04, he clearly did hugely better than Bush ever did among rural whites.

Over the past decade or two, Republicans consolidated and universalized their support from white rural voters. That process is now essentially over (at least in TX, though I definitely expect it to continue in other states), because they have essentially ALL white rural voters in TX. You can go through rural TX, and every white person you see will be a Republican. You can't get more Republican than that.

And that process is the only thing that has been holding up the Republican numbers statewide. So as long as the Urban and Suburban areas continue to drift Dem, you can see where this ends.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

TX-30 is centered on heavily black and Hispanic South Dallas, as well as the heavily black suburbs south of Dallas, while TX-33 is centered on heavily Hispanic West Dallas and western suburbs as well as big chunks of Fort Worth.

All of these areas are growing and growing faster than the state average, even if not growing faster than the suburban boom areas. TX-30 and TX-33 will both have to be significantly physically smaller in their next iterations (TX-33 might well be kicked mostly out of Dallas to just be a Fort Worth and Mid Cities district due to Ft Worth's growth). This is a huge problem to the GOP because these seats are as Dem packed as can be. TX-30 can either take itself further south, giving the northern parts of it to TX-32 and TX-05, or pull itself north and give all of the suburbs south of Dallas to TX-06, dragging TX-06 into Dallas County. TX-33 shrinking in west Dallas and the west Dallas suburbs risks dragging TX-06 again or TX-24 into those areas.

That is actually not quite true. From 2017 population estimates by CD, the TX statewide growth rate from 2010 to 2017 was 12.6%. The national growth rate was 5.5%. TX-30 (10.9% growth rate) and TX-33 (7.9% growth rate) are both slower growing than the state average, although they are a bit faster growing than the national average. Since they are still faster growing than the national average, it is nonetheless probably (depending on rounding error in reapportionment) true that they will indeed have to give up a bit of territory in redistricting, but not all that much.

The Houston area is a bigger problem for the GOP in this respect than the Metroplex. In Houston, TX-18 (14.6% growth) and TX-09 (13.0% growth) are both growing faster than the statewide average, although TX-29 is a bit slower though still faster than the national average (9.1% growth).


More broadly, the real problem for the GOP is that out of the 3.2 million people TX gained since 2000, only 458K (14.5%) of them were white. Just the black population growth of 443K (14.0% of the total growth) is enough to offset the political effect of the white growth, even if you assume that Republicans are overwhelmingly winning the new White growth by 80%-20% or so - which is not a sensible assumption.

What white population growth there is tends to be a bit more concentrated in the most white-liberal of the big TX metro areas - Austin, with white population loss across the rural districts (and rural parts of non-rural districts) and also some white gains in the fastest growing and most Dem-trending suburban districts (where the white share of the population is nonetheless quickly decreasing because the non-white growth is much higher - like TX-03, for example, which although it gained 56k whites, it also gained 116k non-whites, and has been one of the most strongly Dem trending areas of TX in 2016 and 2018).

It is interesting to make a list of all the Congressional districts where the White share of the district's population growth is higher than the statewide average:

TX-25 (56% of the population growth there is White) --- White liberal Austin population growth.
TX-26 (46% of the population growth there is White) --- Denton/DFW suburbs that have trended strongly Dem
TX-08 (41% of the population growth there is White) --- This is basically the only real counterexample where the GOP is okayish in terms of the population growth and people voting R.
TX-31 (37% of the population growth there is White) --- North Austin Williamson County suburbs, where Beto shockingly won Williamson County...
TX-04 (35%) --- This is the 2nd best counterexample other than TX-08, but all the white population growth is basically in Rockwall County in the Dallas suburbs, ie the only part of TX-04 that has trended D.
TX-21 (33%) --- More Austin white liberals.
TX-03 (33%) --- Collin County.
TX-35 (32%) --- Dem Austin Hispanic VRA vote sink getting more white liberals.
TX-12 (29%) --- Fort Worth/suburbs.
TX-10 (26%) --- Austin white liberals and some NW Houston.
TX-22 (23%) --- Fort Bend.
TX-17 (20%) --- All the white population growth in this district is in the North Austin part of the district and in College Station, both of which trended strongly Dem in 2016 and 2018.

That is it. The complete list of all Congressional Districts where White growth is a greater share of the growth than the statewide TX average. Other than TX-08 and TX-04, every last one of them is trouble for the GOP, and about half of those districts are districts where the White growth is in the Austin area.

Every other district has either a lower White share of the growth, or has outright White population loss (Fully 17 Congressional districts in TX have outright White population loss, despite having overall population gain thanks to non-white growth).

TX-24 is probably the best example of this GOP problem with white population growth either not existing, consisting of Austin white liberals, or just getting swamped. Although TX-24 gained 102k people since 2000, it actually had outright white population loss of -8k. And 30k of the 120k non-whites it gained were black. That is obviously not a winning long term formula for a whites-only Republican party.

So I would say that the major part of the problem is simply that these suburban areas like TX-24 are just shifting under the feet of their R incumbents, less so than whether they have to take more territory from districts like TX-30/TX-33. The problem is not new territory, it is the territory that they already have, and that used to be much safer R than it now is. The problem for the GOP is places like Sugar Land are now starting to vote Dem, and you are starting to see Dem-voting precincts spring up in places like... Frisco !?!?!

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I also read a medium post about a person who canvassed for Beto in the end.
The Texas dems had so little infrastructure and Texas was growing so fast the Minivan app had very inaccurate data. The GOTV operation Beto did should refresh the dems on that and they now have a much better list on who to target. In 2020 setting a GOTV operation is much easier. If Beto decides against running for president or senate he should pull a mark warner and run for leader of the TX dems.

Moreover, there is still a lot of improvement that can be made to Dem voter file data simply by running a proper campaign there in 2020. Even though Beto's campaign was huge in comparison to previous TX campaigns, TX is a huge state and they nonetheless missed a lot of people. With another year or so of additional voter contact on top of what Beto already did, the Dem data can actually be substantively improved by the time of election day 2020, whereas in states like Ohio and Florida that have had large scale properly run campaigns for many cycles, Dems are already at or close to their "data ceiling."

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

wait does anyone have the highland park numbers in Dallas for
2012 pres, 2016 pres and 2018 senate.  I want to see these lifelong republicans voting for Beto because Drumpf.

Highland Park is 4 precincts.

2012:

Romney 4248 (79.4%)
Obama 1041 (19.5%)
Total 5350

Romney margin of 3207 votes (59.9%)


2018:

Cruz 3075 (64.6%)
Beto 1641 (34.5%)
Total 4757

Cruz margin of 1434 votes (30.1%).


So as compared to 2012, although Highland Park still voted 2 to 1 Republican, Beto cut the Republican margin in half, and got a 30% swing. So 2 to 1 Republican is quite a bit better than 4 to 1 Republican.