Is This The Year Texas Goes Blue?
For years, Democrats' ambitions of turning the Lone Star State blue seemed like something of a pipe dream. Take, for example, when Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis ran for governor -- after gaining national attention for filibustering abortion restricitons and raising money from around the country -- only to come up 20 points short. But in 2018, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke proved that, under the right conditions, Texas could actually be in play. He lost his bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz by a mere 2.6 points.
Now, Texas isn’t quite becoming a purple state. O'Rourke’s performance was likely only possible because he ran against an unusually unpopular incumbent in a national environment dominated by an unpopular Republican president. As a comparison, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott won re-election that same year by a much safer 13 points. But fortunately for Democrats, this year they are running against Trump in Texas rather than an old-school Republican like the Bushes, who -- of course -- dominated Texas politics for years. And tonight Texas is truly in play, with the chances of Biden winning it at 38 percent.
Traditionally, the idea that Texas could be ripe to turn blue was predicated on the fact that it’s a majority-minority state: 41 percent white, 40 percent Hispanic, 12 percent Black and 5 percent Asian. People of color generally vote for Democrats at much higher rates than white voters, but the challenge for Democrats in Texas has been that the electorate is much whiter than the overall population. Democrats have targeted Hispanic turnout as the way to turn Texas blue, but that goal has been somewhat elusive. And in recent years, much of the leftward shift we’ve seen so far can be chalked up to white, college-educated voters abandoning Trump in the vast suburbs of cities like Houston.
If Biden wins Texas, those voters will have played a big role. But we’ve also seen historic turnout in the state this year, with more people voting before Election Day in 2020 than in the whole 2016 race. So there is some question of whether this will be the year that Democrats finally crack the nut of increasing turnout in Texas.