Tarrant County, Texas

[Young Moderate Republican]

Insight from a Tarrant County resident. Yes Democrats win the inner city areas here. The problem is, Dems get severely blown out in most suburban areas, which are a larger percentage of Tarrant County than the other urban counties. This is why Dems lose the state quite handily. The suburbs don't allow Dems to take the urban counties by the 70-30 margins they need to win statewide (let alone win Tarrant County). Fort Worth is also home to the stockyard and rodeo scene. Fort Worth and Arlington have Republican mayors. Dems have to figure out how to get suburban whites (and a surprisingly large minority of Hispanics) to quit voting like their rural counterparts if they want to flip it. Also don't forget about the populous wealthy suburbs in Collin and Denton (college area that Republicans win as well) counties either... Texas won't flip until these places show significant signs of it. As for when it will flip? It'll be over a decade, barring any epic GOP meltdown. After then, it's hard to tell. They have an 8 point gap to make up in an urban county that's a bit whiter than most others... And these are southern whites we're talking about. They aren't swing voters like whites in the north can be.

[Young Moderate Republican]

How Republican is Fort Worth itself?  Did Bush carry the city proper?

It depends on the precinct. Democrats don't sweep Fort Worth city limits entirely if that's what you're asking.

I would include some helpful links, but I'm too new here to do that. The Texas Tribune ("Can Texas Republicans hold America’s reddest large urban county?") and Fort Worth Star Telegram ("2016 election: Division in a key Texas Republican stronghold?") wrote excellent articles detailing all of this.

[Young Moderate Republican]

Insight from a Tarrant County resident. Yes Democrats win the inner city areas here. The problem is, Dems get severely blown out in most suburban areas, which are a larger percentage of Tarrant County than the other urban counties. This is why Dems lose the state quite handily. The suburbs don't allow Dems to take the urban counties by the 70-30 margins they need to win statewide (let alone win Tarrant County). Fort Worth is also home to the stockyard and rodeo scene. Fort Worth and Arlington have Republican mayors. Dems have to figure out how to get suburban whites (and a surprisingly large minority of Hispanics) to quit voting like their rural counterparts if they want to flip it. Also don't forget about the populous wealthy suburbs in Collin and Denton (college area that Republicans win as well) counties either... Texas won't flip until these places show significant signs of it. As for when it will flip? It'll be over a decade, barring any epic GOP meltdown. After then, it's hard to tell. They have an 8 point gap to make up in an urban county that's a bit whiter than most others... And these are southern whites we're talking about. They aren't swing voters like whites in the north can be.

High end suburban whites weren't a swing demographic in the North either, 50 years ago. Their children were a different story and many of their grandchildren were no longer swing voters, because they had become base Democratic voters (places like Westchester, NY).

The two factors at play, will be how much younger members of this demographic, are less Republican and how high and how democratic the minority vote is. That will determine if or when the states in the sunbelt becomes swing and then Democratic leaning.

The numbers are pretty bad generation gap wise in SC, GA and MS.

I probably should have specified the midwest. I was thinking Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin type of states (which are significantly north of me)... and the possible addition of New Hampshire and Maine in the northeast. I was also referring mainly to whites in general on that last part. Not necessarily wealthy suburbanites. My apologies

[Young Moderate Republican]

How Republican is Fort Worth itself?  Did Bush carry the city proper?

It depends on the precinct. Democrats don't sweep Fort Worth city limits entirely if that's what you're asking.

I would include some helpful links, but I'm too new here to do that. The Texas Tribune ("Can Texas Republicans hold America’s reddest large urban county?") and Fort Worth Star Telegram ("2016 election: Division in a key Texas Republican stronghold?") wrote excellent articles detailing all of this.

Welcome to the forum, BTW

Why thank you kind person!

[Young Moderate Republican]

Since 2000, Tarrant has largely been a bellwether in terms of TX's final margin - especially since 2008. Tarrant's margin has been within one-half of a point of the state's in the three past elections.

Code:

YR	TX	TARRANT	DIFF
2000	21.32	23.96		2.64
2004	22.87	25.38		2.51
2008	11.75	11.70		-0.05
2012	15.78	15.69		-0.09
2016	8.99	8.60		-0.39

Yet Tarrant really hasn't had a breakout moment yet like many rapidly-trending R-to-D suburban counties do, where they suddenly lurch much further to the left in one or more elections than the state as a whole. Part of this may be because such a huge percentage of TX lives in suburban areas, so maybe it's irrelevant, but...if suburban attitudes of Trump as they were last year largely hold - or get worse - then you very well may see Tarrant flip in 2020.

Look at counties in my state - Cobb and Gwinnett in particular - for an example of what could happen, with particular emphasis on the difference in margins between the state and the county.

Code:

YR	GA	COBB		DIFF
2000	11.69	22.90		11.21
2004	16.59	24.82		8.23
2008	5.20	9.41		4.21
2012	7.80	12.42		4.62
2016	5.09	-2.16		-7.25	

Code:

YR	GA	GWINNETT	DIFF
2000	11.69	31.56		19.87
2004	16.59	32.22		15.63
2008	5.20	10.21		5.01
2012	7.80	9.20		1.4
2016	5.09	-5.79		-10.88

Whether it's one that's a bit more gradual/uniform over cycles or one that gradually shifts while occasionally having waves of massive shifts, usually there is suddenly one or more lurches in suburban R-to-D trending counties. I don't think we've seen that happen in Tarrant yet. My money would be on Tarrant being a bit more like Cobb than Gwinnett. Still, you only need one more moderately-sized suburban-style swing in Tarrant to flip it, whether TX as a whole moves along with it or not.

Yeah (also live in Tarrant county) they have often said here amongst our GOP that if Tarrant county falls so does Texas in GOP terms, it is the one stubborn block that really stops the changeover

See my post above; the parts referring to Cobb/Gwinnett are relevant. No sane person before 2016 thought GA would remain GOP with both Cobb and Gwinnett flipping, and yet it happened rather abruptly and massively without really threatening the GOP's statewide dominance.

Collin County (Dallas suburbs) would be a better comparison in size and wealth. It's almost entirely suburban and has a population of just under a million people, rather than 1.8 million in Tarrant. Romney won it by around 31 points in 2012, but Trump won it by only about 17 in 2016.  This actually represented a significant lurch as opposed to a steady trend. Republicans have pulled around 60-65% of the vote here going back to 1996 (with spikes into the low 70s for favorite son George W. Bush). Trump got 55%. It's hard to tell if it's unique to Trump or stays that way. The truth is likely somewhere in between.

[Young Moderate Republican]

Insight from a Tarrant County resident. Yes Democrats win the inner city areas here. The problem is, Dems get severely blown out in most suburban areas, which are a larger percentage of Tarrant County than the other urban counties. This is why Dems lose the state quite handily. The suburbs don't allow Dems to take the urban counties by the 70-30 margins they need to win statewide (let alone win Tarrant County). Fort Worth is also home to the stockyard and rodeo scene. Fort Worth and Arlington have Republican mayors. Dems have to figure out how to get suburban whites (and a surprisingly large minority of Hispanics) to quit voting like their rural counterparts if they want to flip it. Also don't forget about the populous wealthy suburbs in Collin and Denton (college area that Republicans win as well) counties either... Texas won't flip until these places show significant signs of it. As for when it will flip? It'll be over a decade, barring any epic GOP meltdown. After then, it's hard to tell. They have an 8 point gap to make up in an urban county that's a bit whiter than most others... And these are southern whites we're talking about. They aren't swing voters like whites in the north can be.

High end suburban whites weren't a swing demographic in the North either, 50 years ago. Their children were a different story and many of their grandchildren were no longer swing voters, because they had become base Democratic voters (places like Westchester, NY).

The two factors at play, will be how much younger members of this demographic, are less Republican and how high and how democratic the minority vote is. That will determine if or when the states in the sunbelt becomes swing and then Democratic leaning.

The numbers are pretty bad generation gap wise in SC, GA and MS.

I'm not really convinced about MS or especially SC (retiree influx) because I think the black vote will moderate with time, but GA (in 5ish years) and TX (in 10ish years) look quite precarious and LA could even get caught up in this in 15 years or so.  Imagine JBE numbers in the NOLA/Baton Rouge suburbs eventually being the norm in statewide elections.  NC I think will remain no worse than a toss up for Republicans for a long time.  There is enough rural vote left to convert there.  MS is interesting because the rural white vote is already so maxed out, but the state doesn't really have any large cities to drive a Dem trend.

I'm the opposite. I think Hispanics will even out politically over time once the Trump's of the world are gone and they continue to grow as a share of the population. In Texas, they aren't monolithic. A good GOP candidate can take 45% of the Hispanic vote here. Our Republican governor won Hispanic men by a point. That allowed him to beat Wendy Davis by 20 points statewide. Thats why I don't believe Texas turning blue is a sure thing. Whites + swing voting or GOP leaning Hispanics will continue to be a majority of the population for quite a while longer. Ted Cruz won Harris County... That's Houston... The most populous county in the state and third most populous in the U.S. Abbott won Bexar(San Antonio) as well as Harris. Texas flipping is possible, but it's not inevitable by any means and Democrats are gonna have to work hard for it.