If there is to be any mass swing of white votes in Texas, then it will be in suburban counties surrounding Dallas and Houston. That includes about half of Tarrant County (Fort Worth) which is itself about half suburban. President Obama can completely forget Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa, and Wichita Falls, all large cities.
I was looking at the county-wide vote in Texas. Obama won Dallas (Dallas), Travis (Austin), Bexar (San Antonio), Harris (Houston), Jefferson (Beaumont), and El Paso (El Paso) Counties, and everything along the Mexican Border from about Eagle Pass. He lost Tarrant County (Fort Worth), but the county is heavily suburban (containing Arlington, one of the largest suburbs in America not in New York or California). He barely lost San Patricio County (Corpus Christi), which really is a large city,
What Obama did not win in Texas that he won in most other states with giant cities is... suburban Texas. Aside from coming close to winning Fort Bend (near Houston) and Hays (near Austin) he lost the suburban rings of counties around Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. He was just simply clobbered in Denton, Collin, Rockwall, and Ellis Counties near Dallas, Comal (near San Antonio), and Galveston (which is about half-suburban and half "Greater Galveston"). Some of those counties went about 75-25 for McCain. In the states that Obama won, with the arguable exception of Wisconsin, Obama did well in the suburbs.
If Obama had done as well in suburbs around Dallas and Houston as he did around, for example, Philadelphia or even St. Louis, then he would have won Texas. Of course Barack Obama did practically no campaigning in Texas after the primary campaign, so he never gave his pitch to suburbanites in Texas.
Obama did execrably in the northwestern third of the state, even losing Amarillo, Lubbock, and Wichita Falls (all cities over 100,000 people) and of course Midland and Odessa by huge margins. Politically the area is much like western Nebraska even where it is urban.
Is Texas racist? Not especially. Much less than Mississippi or Alabama. Texas is one of few states with large Hispanic and African-American populations by proportion. Obama did campaign in the suburbs, much as he had to in Illinois, in those states tin which he did campaign.
This can be said: should Texas suburbanites vote in 2012 as did suburbanites in Ohio or Virginia did in 2008, then Obama wins Texas. Of course, President Obama will need to do well in suburban America outside Texas to win re-election. Core cities just aren't enough anymore. It is hard to see how Texas suburbanites are in any lesser economic stress than suburbanites in California or Pennsylvania. But without a mass shift of white suburban voters in the state, Obama still loses the state by about an 8% margin.
I don't see Obama winning the suburbs in Texas in 2012. The Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth suburbs, as you noted, went strongly for McCain. And counties like Montgomery (Houston suburbs) are very white, middle to upper class, and conservative in economic and social issues. The voters in places like Tarrant are angry at what they see as an overly liberal agenda.
One thing to note is that suburbs in the South (if you consider Texas especially Southern) are the historic bastions of Southern Republicanism. These areas can be quite reactionary, for lack of a better term, and they are resistant to strong change that they perceive to be threatening. A lot of these areas also aren't urbanized culturally or economically like many Northern suburbs are.
If we look at Obama's strongest showings in suburban Texas, places like Tarrant County are on the list. Obama got just under 44 percent of the vote here-not bad for a conservative Southern suburban county, but still not close to winning. Kerry and Gore both got about 37 percent here.
I suspect that the GOP is wise enough in 2012 to run a ticket that doesn't alienate suburban voters like McCain/Palin did in 2008. If we consider 2008 to be an especially bad year for the GOP in suburbs, then 44 percent is probably close to the best that a Democrat can do in the Texas suburbs until major demographic changes occur in the Texas suburban electorate.
