We have been through this before.
1.Texas is massive and flat, so can assimilate more.
2.Texas Cities are built differenty, a Texas suburb isn't similar to an Atlanta one.
3.Texas rural population has mostly kept up with population growth.
4.Texas is cheaper, so it has more poor and middle class people.
5.Texas has a large mining sector.
6.Texas climate is mostly sub-tropical.
Put them all together and you see why Texas has shown little cultural shift over many decades.
Compare it with California:
1. California is sandwiched between mountains and the sea.
2. California's Urban planning is hellish.
3. California's rural population has declined.
4. California is very expensive, so it has few middle class people.
5. California relies on Tech companies.
6. California's climate is unstable mediterrenian.
Texas is more like a typical Southern American State, while California is like a typical Southern European State.
Some responses:
1. Don't really see why this would make TX stay more R; there are plenty of places where there are extreme political divides despite little or no geographic barriers.
2. Don't really get what it means by "they're built differently" and why this would affect partisanship. If anything, TX suburbs tend to be built denser than Atlanta suburbs which one assumes might help Dems.
3. This is literally false by any metric of analyzing "rural" counties.
4. The point is TX is becoming more expensive and increasingly has more of the college educated types favorable to Dems. This might be true now, but the point is it's changing.
5. Sure, but again, that mining sector is shrinking as a share of the state's economy.
6. Climate doesn't inherently affect partisanship
For thousands of years it has been observed that surroundings affect what people do, it has even been a subject of famous movies:
So of course the entire Pacific coast from Anchorage to the tip of Baha in Mexico has a liberal tilt, and of course Florida Man and Queensland Man exist.
You can call it the Fog vs Humid Heat divide for simplicity.
