Talk Elections

Anybody surprised by the big swing in Texas this year? I didn't think the rural areas could get any more Republican but they did, and a lot of them were very hard swings. Harris County swung despite becoming more diverse in the past four years, but what's more surprising is that Travis County TX (Austin) swung even more strongly than Harris- I thought this was an increasingly liberal area. A lot of south Texas swung towards Obama but large swaths went more for Romney which is the most surprising to me considering Obama's awesome performance with Hispanics.

The only meaningful swing towards Obama was Dallas County, which is strange since it's long been thought of as a very conservative city with an evangelical streak. All the talk of Texas being a future swing state now seems unwarranted.

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Yeah, I really didn't think he had much more room to fall in the counties near the LA/AR/OK border.

I was really surprised that Travis trended R.

I was surprised he didn't do well in Austin. But that's it. But I still think TX still has the potential to become a swing state due to demographics, plus many of the Hispanic counties still went for Obama (which is a promising sign for that prediction), and the big cities mainly swung to Romney because a lot of the conservatives who didn't vote in 08 at all (due to McCain's moderate positions) voted in 12 and went heavily for Romney.

I'm shocked you thought Dallas was conservative, it really isn't a conservative city at all, it's suburbs are.

one thing i found interesting was the hard R trend in the Balcones escarpment area. What makes that area more GOP then anywhere else in rural Texas?

It seems like the big swings in rural texas were in corn/oil/gas areas, while the swings in East Texas and the utterly useless counties near NM were smaller (some even swung D!)

The only way the majority of Hispanics in TX will ever vote GOP is if they all convert to Protestantism en masse. Just letting you know.

I think there is some coal mining in those areas.

I've never been to Dallas, but I've been to Houston. All I ever heard was that Houston was more diverse and had more of a Hispanic feel, while Dallas had more of a cowboy culture, so I figured it was more conservative. I guess I also forgot to realize that the Dallas metro as a whole may be more conservative that Houston, but Dallas county is just much more urban than Harris which contains the city of Houston as well as a lot of suburbs.

You're right about Houston being more diverse, it feels like LA or Chicago than it does Texas. But Dallas is diverse too.

Lots of Hispanics but lots of Whites as well, including lots of traditionally Republican Hispanics. Least surprising swing in Texas.

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And yes, Obama still got some of the redneck vote in NE Texas in 2008, and quite possibly in 2012.

There's a lot of Cubans over in that region you guys are talking about.

What's with the surprise?  Obama hit what was effectively the ceiling a Democrat can do in Texas in 2008 due to the unique circumstances, especially his and Clinton's lengthy primary campaign forcing them to build up campaign infrastructure in a state they otherwise never would have.  Obama's 2012 result in Texas is him returning to the mean: his ~42% is basically what a Democrat is supposed to get in Texas.  The Texas Democratic Party (an institution I'm actually very, very personally familiar with) is a corpse.  It has no electioneering mechanism to speak of.  Without Obama's own 2008 machine, there's nothing to see here.

The texas trend map has got a really nice level of symmetry around Dallas.

Do you think someone could make Texas a swing state by giving the TDP an electioneering mechanism that works?

Texas will eventually become more competitive, but it's a far more long-term prospect than most people assume.  Much of the blame for that is that the Texas Democrats are in no position to capitalize on changing demographics: the party has a serious dearth of serious statewide candidates, it has a very small number of state legislators to use as a bench for up and comers, and the party itself is effectively owned by old white trial lawyers who are only Democrats because the GOP is the party of tort reform.  In addition, the demographic shifts aren't as reflected in voting patterns as one might assume because a large number of Texas Hispanics are either A. not U.S. citizens, or B. under 18.  Furthermore, especially among older Hispanics and first generation immigrants from Mexico, Mexico's rather depressing political culture engenders a degree of skepticism about voting: for many decades, Mexico's one-party PRI regime made it so that voting was something that would, at best, serve as an opportunity to receive a bribe and at worst would only serve to bring you to the attention of the authorities.  Obviously, that's begun to change in the last decade or so, and younger Hispanics born in the US are much more friendly to the voting system, but especially in the Valley, low voter turnout is the rule, not the exception.

Basically, yes, I think Texas is going to get closer, but it's going to be a much, much slower process than many think. 

Denton county (one of the depressingly blue ones directly north of Dallas county) is where most of the evangelicals live now...Dallas county's pretty diverse, to say the least.

I thought that was Collin County? Denton County is somewhat of a diverse college county, with many ranchers in the outskirts affecting it's outcome.

Even Travis is trending GOP?  As if my opinion of TX could get any lower...

Of course Travis is trending GOP: Obama got every vote he could possibly get there in 2008.  2012 is his falling back to where a Democrat should perform in Texas.

I laughed slightly too much at this.

I always thought of Denton county and the suburbs around Dallas as ground zero for white evangelical Christians living in their McMansions, is there anywhere else in the country that has a greater concentration, maybe suburban Atlanta?

Yes, North Fulton specifically. There is a huge mega church in Alpharetta called North Point that has at least 10,000 members. The area is very wealthy and well educated but it's remained very conservative partly because of the evangelical culture there. But it's more Colorado Springs than Bible Belt religiosity.

Houston would also count too. Joel Osteen's church is there and it's massive. And then of course you have Orange County, CA....

Southern suburbia is way more evangelical, mega church central. Orange County and the Inland Empire has some of it but southern suburbia is more...pure....

Joel Osteen really isn't a real minister, he's just a motivational speaker who says "Jesus" like once or twice. 

Houston's suburbs are majority evangelical, but are becoming less and less so with immigration.

There's a lot of Travis County that's very Republican, especially the western parts which are white suburbs. A Democrat can't really get much more than Obama did in 2008 there.

For a Democrat to win Texas, two things need to happen that are not happening right now: 1) Hispanics have to turn out a lot more, which is a problem of both the Texas Democratic party being underfunded and incompetent AND the Texan Hispanic population being disproportionately under-18 and non-citizen and 2) Democrats have to do significantly better with whites than Obama did.

Mikado's description of the TX Democratic Party is also very true. IIRC, our Senate candidate against Ted Cruz was a member of this class.

#2 is a VERY impossible feat at this point. The only hope is the whites from places like Illinois, New York, California, etc. that might have been moving into Texas a lot in the present that could help make up for it. I think that's what helped made Florida and North Carolina swing states.

I think the issue with migration to Texas is that a lot of those people are conservatives to begin with. Or they come to Texas and become more conservative. Florida is really 3 states in one, a southern state up north, a midwestern state in the middle of the state, and a northeastern state in the south. North Carolina had in migration of well educated people to the Raleigh-Durham area and they didn't work in industries which are favorable to the Republicans. In Texas many move to work in the oil industry in Houston or the telecommunications industry in Dallas. Even the software engineers seem conservative out there. Maybe the in migration that is happening in Austin will be different from that. Still, Texas is a mindset and it attracts a lot of conservative people and even those who are in the middle buy into the low tax and low cost living when they move there. Also, liberals will likely avoid moving there, but may not have as much of a problem moving to Atlanta or North Carolina.

I call BS on this one, the vast majority of them are liberal.

As for the rest of the post Florida is a low tax state and look what happened to that state in the long run, it became the biggest swing state in the union. Also I think liberals might enjoy Dallas and Houston, very ethnically diverse and less cowboy culture and more big city culture. There's a good reason why the Cities are blue and the country side is mainly conservative and red. The only thing that might make people conservative if people did move here might be if they all converted to Evangelical Protestantism or became 1%ers within a year or two (that is hardly ever heard of). However I do know there is a growing industry of religious publishing (making and printing Bibles) in Texas then again they were mostly conservative to begin with.

Most people don't think about politics when relocating, many of the liberals that I know that moved down here to Houston and Texas just moved here for the weather and jobs, and I know many conservatives who did move out to places like San Francisco or Boston and they didn't care as long as there was a job. You also forgot the mention there's a large movie making industry growing in the DFW area, and we all know a lot of them tend to attract liberals.

If the vast majority of software engineers are liberals, then Plano and Richardson wouldn't vote like they do. Maybe you are correct about Austin, but certainly not the Dallas area. Also, I do think those who are in the middle are going to be more likely to become Republican in Texas just due to it's reputation. If they like Texas better than their old state, they will likely credit the Republicans for that. That is not the case with Florida, Georgia or North Carolina. I know what you are going to say, but most people aren't political junkies. They don't know how most states vote regularly. They do know Texas votes Republican though, just like they know California and New York vote Democrat.

Most of them aren't there: They're mostly in East Dallas, Grand Prairie, and Irving. All of them are Democratic leaning areas. Heck even if they did credit Texas Republicans for being better than their old state, they're still aren't going to quickly change their social views, that's the big hole many of them are trying to bridge to the newcomers.

Of course they live in Plano and Richardson too! There are plenty of those jobs in the Richardson area, and it's a short commute up to Plano. Irvine has a lot of tech jobs as well, but it's not the software engineers that make the place Democratic leaning. Same goes with Grand Prairie (if in fact a lot of engineers even live there in the first place).

Texas unfortunately is a state of dueling trends and it looks as if parts of the state are moving faster to the gop than other parts are moving to the democrats.

Sounds like recipe for a future battleground state.

It's true, though. The TX Dems can't win any elections for two main reasons:

1. They have zero connections to any business or industry other than plaintiffs' attorneys. The Republicans have a monopoly on oil & gas.

2. They can't find a Kathleen Sebelius-type candidate who can steal away enough Republicans to win an election. I'm not talking about Paul Sadler-types from rural East Texas. I'm talking about a centrist from a major city who has private sector connections to facilitate fundraising and who can win over white suburban voters.

Well Bill White was supposed to be that, but then he lost by double digits to Rick Perry anyway.

Would Sadler have a chance if he was from, say, Dallas?  I was watching his debate against Cruz and I was really impressed.  And what really surprised me was how liberal he was (and I've read his positions on the issues on his website and he seems to be a real Democrat rather than a blue dog).
Cruz for example was talking about building a wall on the border with Mexico and he responded by saying that Mexico is our number 1 trading partner (I'm pretty sure they're number 2 but whatever), what kind of message does that send to them?

Edit:  they're actually our 3rd largest trading partner behind Canada and China.

I suspect he meant Texas's no. 1 trading partner, which I believe is true.

He ran in a Tea Party year. If he ran against Perry in like 2006, he would've won by a slight margin.

He didn't do nearly enough to court Republicans. Something like 30% of the GOP primary voters that year voted for Kay Bailey Hutchison (myself included). He should have gone after those people with reckless abandon.

And I never understood why he refused to release his tax returns. Perry refused to debate him as a result and it made him give off this vibe of being a mysterious, rich Mitt Romney type. If he had gotten Rick to have an "oops" moment during that election, who knows what might have happened.