TX-University of Texas/Texas Politics Project: Trump +8

[pbrower2a]

Texas has had an anomaly of so many suburban voters going for Republicans. Maybe the suburbs around Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin are newer and have infrastructure that doesn't yet have the high costs of maintenance and management that one associates with older suburbs of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis.   

See also Georgia and Arizona for a similar effect. Orange County in California fits the pattern.

[pbrower2a]

Explanation of how Clinton is up 5 points nationally, but the EC is close??

 

The states have been extremely polarized while Barack Obama has been President. He generally wins by big margins or loses by big margins. Not many states can take simple swings from favoring Republicans to going to the Democratic side.

The gains for Hillary Clinton from Obama 2012 so far are from states unlikely to vote for her -- states that went 60-40 for Republicans in 2012.  If she gains 7% in all states that Obama lost, then she picks up North Carolina.

[pbrower2a]

Here's how I predict states (and three districts) going in the election -- state and the Clinton electoral vote after each win between 226 and 450 electoral votes, Wisconsin to Texas:

Wisconsin 226
Pennsylvania 246
New Hampshire 250
Iowa 256
Nevada 262
Colorado 271
ME-02  272
Virginia 285
Ohio 313
Florida 332
North Carolina 347
Arizona 359
NE-02 360
Missouri 370
Indiana 381
Georgia 396
Kansas 402
NE-01 403
South Carolina 412
Texas 450

...I did not miss New Mexico. It is Safe D.

[pbrower2a]

Now two polls showing Texas with a high single digit deficit for Clinton. If I were Hillary I'd try to pull off a huge Latino voter registration drive in the state to see if her baseline of 42% or so improves a little bit. Right now it's probably not close enough to start spending TV money there but I'd like to build a nice stealth ground operation to potentially steal it if it gets close

Nah, if this kind of trend holds with Hispanics, she needs to lock up Florida and do a full court press in AZ with her extra funds.  That basically seals the deal even if the map gets really weird further NE.

If she wins Arizona she is also winning Colorado and Nevada.

This is beginning to look like a three-way race (as those go).  I expect Gary Johnson to do at least as well as John Anderson in 1980, if not Ross Perot in the 1990s.

[pbrower2a]

Texas is a tough state in which to poll. No other state is like it in its regional diversity, so getting valid samples is tough.

Texas could go D in the Presidential election if two things happen:

1. the Hispanic vote becomes more partisan and larger, and

2. the suburban vote becomes less rigid in its pattern of voting R. The suburban vote around Dallas and Houston has demographics much the same as those of suburbanites around Chicago and San Francisco, but votes like ranch owners. 

Yes, Trump has insulted Hispanics badly and has offended just about everyone with an IQ above the dull-normal range. But if he loses Texas he gives Hillary Clinton a share of the electoral vote much those that Eisenhower got in the 1950s.     

[pbrower2a]

Texas has had an anomaly of so many suburban voters going for Republicans. Maybe the suburbs around Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin are newer and have infrastructure that doesn't yet have the high costs of maintenance and management that one associates with older suburbs of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis.   

See also Georgia and Arizona for a similar effect. Orange County in California fits the pattern.

Suburban voters going Republican is an anomaly?  News to me.  Republicans won the suburban vote in 2010, 2012 and 2014, you are aware, yes?

Going so strongly. It's relative -- greater San Francisco (Marin and San Mateo, which are undeniably suburban, went D) vs. some suburbs of greater Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Atlanta.

[pbrower2a]

Bill Clinton lost Texas by only 6% in 1996. An 8% margin for Demagogue Don over Hillary Clinton is within the margin of error of the 1996 Presidential election in a legitimate three-way race.

1992 and 1996 may be more relevant to this Presidential race than 2008 and 2012 as a pair or 2000 and 2004 as a pair.

[pbrower2a]

Bill Clinton lost Texas by only 6% in 1996. An 8% margin for Demagogue Don over Hillary Clinton is within the margin of error of the 1996 Presidential election in a legitimate three-way race.

1992 and 1996 may be more relevant to this Presidential race than 2008 and 2012 as a pair or 2000 and 2004 as a pair.

Except looking at the county results, Clinton clearly had a lot of support still from Yellow Dog Democrats in rural TX.  Obama ushered those folks out of the party, and Hillary is finishing the deed.  You hope to make up those votes by winning over socially conservative, rich suburbanites in Dallas or Houston?  I say that's a tall task for Hillary Clinton.

It is a tall task (not that she needs to do it, because she doesn't need Texas even to be close)...

Are suburban Texans or Georgians  that much different in culture from those of suburban Kansas City, St. Louis, or Denver?

I had thought that the suburbs of Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston were more conservative because they were newer and had more rural characteristics.Newness implies that their infrastructure has yet to begin blatant decay that requires big spending to maintain. Also, older suburbs often have apartment complexes supplanting old single-family dwellings from just after World War II (housing made to last the lives of the original owners, and the WWII vets who bought those houses when new have largely died off; the houses now decrepit or grossly obsolete -- try selling a one-bathroom house today)...with apartment complexes adding much more street traffic.

It's not Hillary Clinton who will win such people over to the Democratic Party; it is Donald Trump who could drive them D for the 2012 Presidential election. It would be a one-time event likely reversed in 2020.

Insult the intelligence of educated people, and lose the suburbs.

[pbrower2a]

Rural East Texas is much more like rural Alabama, Georgia, or South Carolina than it is like Dallas or Houston  in its politics. It has been infamous for racism as western Texas wasn't.

Texas is not part of any region of the United States, and it is diverse enough in its ethnic distribution and its economic realities (The areas around Amarillo and Lubbock better resemble Nebraska than "East Texas"; the entire Rio Grande Valley within Texas votes more like New Mexico than like any other part of Texas; Texas has some relatively-liberal and cosmopolitan giant cities (Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio -- maybe Fort Worth) that have gigantic vote totals for a Democrat.  Texas is large enough to be a region in itself, but in reality it straddles regions. 

How Texas has voted since 1976:


1976 51 D 48 R
1980 55 R 41 D
1984 64 R 35 D
1988 56 R 43 D
1992 41 R 37 D (22 to Perot)
1996 49 R 44 D (7 to Perot, with a rounding error)
2000 59 R 37 D
2004 61 R 38 D
2008 55 R 43 D
2012 57 R 41 D

As late as 1976, Texas could vote for a Southern moderate in a close election. After four years of a perceived disaster of the Carter Presidency, Texas was still more D than the US as a whole during the first Reagan landslide. But it was also more R, mainly because John Anderson (who got nearly 7% of the vote nationwide) didn't get even 3% of the vote in Texas.

All that electoral blowouts can say about a State is that the state might vote contrary to the national trend. Otherwise, electoral blowouts say more about the inadequacy of a challenger to an incumbent or the state  is so partisan against the Party of the winner that it when it goes 52-47 for the winner while the country as a whole goes 60-40 it shows that it still has a partisan edge for the Party whose nominee lost.

The 1992 and 1996 elections  were genuine three-way elections with the complexity that the Third Party nominee was a real Favorite Son in Texas. If any Democrat should have been a good match for Texas' political culture  it should have been Bill Clinton -- and he still lost the state twice. Texas was clearly drifting R by now.

Dubya was sort of a Favorite Son -- more than his father -- in Texas. That was good enough for some electoral blowouts in 2000 and 2004 in a state that was typically Lean R. Democrats were not winning statewide elections, though. The last Democratic Governor of Texas was Ann Richards; the last Democratic Senator elected from Texas was Lloyd Bentsen.

As polarized as America was in partisan politics by region in 2008 and 2012... a Presidential nominee whose only connection to the American South was that his wife's family originated from Mississippi was going to do badly in Texas. Obama was winning by Reagan-style margins in much of the North and losing by McGovern-like margins in much of the South. Having an African (and not African-American) father and being as blatant a d@mnyankee egghead as he is, Barack Obama was going to do badly in Texas.

...I cannot imagine anything stronger than a close win for Donald Trump, and such would require a gross failure of the Clinton campaign. Basically it would be 2000 all over, maybe down to the Republican Governor of Florida being able to 'guarantee' that Trump could win 'his' swing state. Weird things can happen, like an economic meltdown or some international disaster... but that is what a Trump victory would need.

That Donald Trump is down to a high single-digit lead  in Texas suggests that Texas is back to the 1990s in its overall orientation. But Donald Trump will be doing better in the nativist East Texas than Bob Dole in 1996. Donald Trump will do worse in the Rio Grande Valley and in the urban areas of the Dallas-Houston-San Antonio triangle, an area better resembling North Carolina than Alabama.

Donald Trump is not picking off anything in the Blue (Atlas Red) firewall of seventeen states and DC that have never voted for any Republican nominee after 1988. He will lose New Mexico. He's not doing well in the swing states; he really has little room for error in those -- absolutely none in Florida.  Losing the combination of Iowa and New Hampshire (highly likely) makes Virginia and Ohio must-wins as well. Nevada is something of a mystery, but it shows no sign (aside from one laughably-obsolete poll) of being different from New Mexico; without it, Trump must win Colorado as well.

Winning every swing state of 2012 (which also includes North Carolina) puts Hillary Clinton at 347 electoral votes. Before she can pick up Texas she also wins such electoral prizes as Indiana, Georgia, Missouri, and Arizona... putting her at 396 electoral votes. Texas puts her well over 400 electoral votes if she is not there 'before' Texas.

With his anti-intellectual demagoguery, Donald Trump can lose a big chunk of the suburban vote in greater Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. The vile stuff that he has said about Hispanics will resonate strongly with Hispanic voters... about as well as replays of segregationist cant will resonate among blacks of any socioeconomic group  (that is, like fingernails on a chalkboard).