Texas 2022 megathread

[Unelectable Bystander]

Party with the lead in Early Voting for Primaries by county as of February 15

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238,065 Texans have voted so far, 1.39% of registered Texan voters.

93,553 (39.30%) voted in the Democratic Primary
144,512 (60.70%) voted in the Republican Primary

Oh yea the RGV is TOTALLY gonna swing dem!!!!1!!!1!!

Not surprising with the low turnout though, especially when Beto is practically running unopposed and Abbott's primary opponents seem to be online candidates, even with Huffines signs everywhere.

As usual though, I imagine more republicans will vote in person on election day.

Is Abbott coming for the RGV? I can’t tell margins

[Unelectable Bystander]

-FEB 15 UPDATE-

Party with the lead in Early Voting for Primaries by county as of February 16

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353,507 Texans have voted so far, 2.06% of registered Texan voters.

134,564 (38.07%) voted in the Democratic Primary
218,943 (61.93%) voted in the Republican Primary


County Flips

To Democrats: Galveston, Uvalde
To Republicans: Hays, Nueces, Jefferson

That is already a sign for much larger turnout in the Republican primary than 2018. Already a seventh of the amount of voters in the 2018 Republican party have voted in this primary.

Any idea if there’s any documented correlation between GE and primary preferences?

[Unelectable Bystander]

-FEB 15 UPDATE-

Party with the lead in Early Voting for Primaries by county as of February 16

Image Link

353,507 Texans have voted so far, 2.06% of registered Texan voters.

134,564 (38.07%) voted in the Democratic Primary
218,943 (61.93%) voted in the Republican Primary


County Flips

To Democrats: Galveston, Uvalde
To Republicans: Hays, Nueces, Jefferson

That is already a sign for much larger turnout in the Republican primary than 2018. Already a seventh of the amount of voters in the 2018 Republican party have voted in this primary.

Any idea if there’s any documented correlation between GE and primary preferences?

There isn't one. primary turnout does not predict winners.

Hmm but do you know if laser eye primary turnout predicts winners?

[Unelectable Bystander]

Don't know if this is the last update we'll get, but here's an update, again apples to apples.



 - Turnout has now exceeded 2018 for early voting in these counties. But not [yet] for Democrats.
 - Again, note the RGV counties, Cameron and Hidalgo. Likely a record high number of GOP primary voters there despite continued Dem dominance.
 - In the rest of the state, R primary is outvoting D, 489K(77%)-145K(23%)

Holy El Paso!

[Unelectable Bystander]

At this point we can pretty much project, even before polls close in both time zones, that Beto O'Rourke will be the democratic nominee for governor of Texas.

But is Beto contested for the nomination at all? It’s tough to say, nobody on here has addressed that topic yet

[Unelectable Bystander]

At this point we can pretty much project, even before polls close in both time zones, that Beto O'Rourke will be the democratic nominee for governor of Texas.

But is Beto contested for the nomination at all? It’s tough to say, nobody on here has addressed that topic yet

Is it that hard for you to look up? Lots of info on the internet.

If you must ask, I was joking because about 27 different people on team Beto have mentioned this in regards to turnout

[Unelectable Bystander]

Those El Paso numbers (and I think other populated counties too?) are huge and show that it’s not just Zapata county it’s swaths of people

[Unelectable Bystander]

Remember not to extrapolate too much on basis of primary turnout results.

I also don’t pronounce someone guilty just for being in the area at the time of a crime, but when there’s several other pieces of circumstantial evidence, it becomes concrete evidence. We keep seeing signs of the RGV transformation

[Unelectable Bystander]

Those El Paso numbers (and I think other populated counties too?) are huge and show that it’s not just Zapata county it’s swaths of people

Yes, this is why the narrative that it’s just some rural/small-town border counties in the RGV/South TX that will barely make a dent in the inevitable D trend and be completely overwhelmed by massive D shifts in the metro areas is flawed. If all those 'smaller' counties and El Paso/Hidalgo trend strongly to the right and Houston remains stagnant, even Dallas, Fort Worth, and Austin very likely won’t flip the state this decade.

We’ll see what happens, but right now, TX isn’t looking like "GA 2016" but more like a (more) Republican mirror image of MN. That could change, so Republicans can’t get overconfident, but I don’t think TX becoming a blue state any time soon is quite as inevitable as it’s made out to be.

in order for those shifts to matter though, the GOP has to actually be cutting into Dems net vote margins otherwise they're just stopping Dems from winning as many votes as they could have.

In 2020 for instance, Biden still net more votes than Clinton out of El Paso, even if it swung right.

However, in Hidalgo, Trump cut Biden's margin (from HRC) by ~35k votes which is pretty substantial. However, unless you believe the GOP will start outright winning the County, the 38k remaining votes in Biden's margin isn't a lot to cut into.

A reminder that in just 1 cycle, Biden was able to net about 100k more votes out of Dallas and Travis counties a piece, and still expanded on Clinton's Harris County margin by about 60k votes despite it's "stagnation". That more than cancels out Hidalgo.

If the GOP wants to hold Texas, Hidalgo doesn't do much unless it actually becomes strongly GOP leaning, but increasing raw vote margins in areas that already heavily favour them but have low turnout would probably go much further

You could use the same argument for Dems. It's probably not worth it to invest in rural Texas, but heavily minority parts of Dallas and Houston in particularly have quite poor turnout; juicing that up could really help them. Even if Houston stagnates, if turnout increases Dems can still net more raw votes out of it.

My guess is Texas is in reach for Dems going forwards but it takes a bit before it actually votes to the left of the nation.

It’s true that these counties alone will not hold off a few cycles of sustained shifts in the metros. But the idea that the triangle metro counties can all keep shifting hard left forever in a neutral environment is not very realistic. Biden already handily carried the moderate and independent vote in Texas and at some point these counties max out under the current electorate (as has been stated about Miami-Dade). Maybe the electorate changes eventually with demographic change, but that takes time

[Unelectable Bystander]

Bruh
https://twitter.com/newswire_us/status/1522265512444583936?s=21&t=PoSr---ePv...

Honestly these are the types of things that make this situation a potential positive for the GOP. People have compared this to defunding police. It’s more similar to Kenosha. The negative effect it will have for them is the extent to which the politicians act like Trump, and the reverse backlash will be to the extent that Dems act like defunders

[Unelectable Bystander]

Bruh
https://twitter.com/newswire_us/status/1522265512444583936?s=21&t=PoSr---ePv...

Beto 2022 feels a lot like Wendy Davis 2014. The campaign does all it can to make Austin liberals happy but doesn't really do anything to attract the oh so coveted "moderate" suburban swing voters. This race was always going to be an uphill battle, but it feels like Texas Dems aren't really even trying.

Tbf I do think the degree they need these "swing suburban voters" to win Texas is overrated. Beto isn't winning Texas in 2022 barring a miracle, but I'd argue fixing godawful turnout in downtown Dallas and Houston would ultimately go a lot further. Ironically, Austin is really the only majour Texas city with good turnout in hyper D areas (prolly because white liberals).

Also it's important to remember by and large folks support abortions. Like, most swing voters prolly at least agree abortion should be allowed in cases of rape and incest, though that doesn't mean this isn't poor messaging.

I think this is sorta a simillar thing to Georgia where Dems technically had the votes to win statewide for a while, it's just turnout in Atlanta was dreadful relative to the rest of the state. Yes the strong swings in GA-06 and GA-07 helped but the number of votes Biden net over Obama in the 3 core Atlanta districts (4, 5, and 13) is insane in comparison.

Also worth noting Davis did end outperforming Obama in Austin and Dallas suburbs (in terms of % margin) but pretty much underperformed everywhere else lol.

NBC exit polls in 2020 had it at only 48-46, and those that think abortion should be illegal broke 10% harder for Trump than their counterparts did for Biden. So it’s roughly evenly split, is more important to republicans in Texas. When talking about being legal in all cases, only 15% approve. This is in no way a winning issue for Beto

[Unelectable Bystander]

Let’s all stop the gaslighting. It’s an absolutely devastating tragedy that nobody wants. It’s not the time to make it about himself. Even DeSantis and Biden were mature enough to realize this with the collapsed condo 

[Unelectable Bystander]

Seems there's this unofficial quota where someone has to mention how TX-GOV won't flip on every page of the thread

The quota lives for another page!

This exists, but pales in comparison to the democrat obsession with Texas. There are also quotas for reassurance posts such as:

1) Lecturing atlas about the Republican campaign strategies in Texas

2) Referencing “demographic change”

3) Reminding everyone that this isn’t “Texas in the 90’s”

4) Comparing candidate quality between Abbott and Beto

Between these, and the obligatory “safe R” posts, this is really a pretty useless thread.

[Unelectable Bystander]

Biden won Hispanics about 58-41. Most polls show Abbott well into the 40’s with them and maybe even being a tossup. Also, early votes are not everything but districts 15/28/34 are among the biggest republican over-performances in the country. It suggests the conventional wisdom about momentum in those districts could be true.

Based on all this, I think Abbott gets at least 43% or so of the Hispanic vote and would not be shocked if he narrowly won it.