Texas in 2020

[Nym90]

Really hard to say on Texas. It has been so long since a Democrat won here at any level, even for statewide office that it is difficult to visualize it actually happening as the GOP seems to have a pretty solid 52% of the vote that will stick with them come heck or high water. Past winning Democratic maps like Lloyd Bentsen's in 1988 or Ann Richards' in 1990 (to say nothing of Jimmy Carter's in 1976) don't bear much resemblance to what a winning Democratic map would look like now. Like much of the South, Democrats lost Texas for good once the rural parts of the state abandoned them.

But if the major metro areas start voting more like major metro areas in the North do, then Texas will be competitive. There were definite signs of southern metro areas in general starting to behave more like northern ones this year (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Atlanta). A big reason why the South in general is so GOP is due to the fact that Southern cities and especially Southern suburbs are so Republican compared to cities in the rest of the US.