When will Texas become a swing state?

[Vepres]

Once the children of illegal immigrant (who are themselves citizens) are old enough to vote. Texas went from 61% R in 2004 to 55% R in 2008, while the white vote remained at 75/25 R. As another poster would say, be patient.

This was because the "favorite son" vote actually helped Bush a lot in the Rio Grande valley (much less elsewhere); it is almost impossible to imagine Cameron County coming even close to voting for a Republican not from Texas, but it happily voted for Bush in 2004. In the long-term, yes, as the second and third generations grow up, the state will become more Democratic. However, this needs to be coupled with a weakening of the GOP in the suburbs to tip the state to the Democrats.

I find it hard to believe that Hispanics are uniquely inclined to vote for a "favorite son." Again, the white vote diden't change a bit. What has happenned is that the GOP has gone suicidal on the  immigration issue.

Hispanics seemed to like Bush a lot for some reason. Maybe they felt that as a former Governor of their highly (relatively) Hispanic state that he understood them better than another Republican might?

Didn't Bush also make a deliberate effort to reach out to Hispanics in 2004?

Once the children of illegal immigrant (who are themselves citizens) are old enough to vote. Texas went from 61% R in 2004 to 55% R in 2008, while the white vote remained at 75/25 R. As another poster would say, be patient.

This was because the "favorite son" vote actually helped Bush a lot in the Rio Grande valley (much less elsewhere); it is almost impossible to imagine Cameron County coming even close to voting for a Republican not from Texas, but it happily voted for Bush in 2004. In the long-term, yes, as the second and third generations grow up, the state will become more Democratic. However, this needs to be coupled with a weakening of the GOP in the suburbs to tip the state to the Democrats.

It's worth noting that second generation Hispanics are more Republican than their parents, and third generation Hispanics are more Republican than their parents. They all favor Democrats, but I believe I saw a poll where first generation Hispanics voted almost 80% Democratic, while third generation only voted 55% or so Democratic.

Personally, I think fully naturalized Hispanics (those who speak English as a first language, etc.) will be a key swing group in the future, not the Democratic block that they were in 2008.

[Vepres]

Also (to Vepres), the multi-generation Hispanic statistics are heavily skewed by Puerto Ricans and Cubans, who make up the majority of multi-generation Hispanics in the country but are much less represented among immigrants, or in Texas. Such numbers are pretty much useless. Furthermore, turnout among immigrant Hispanics is so dreadful that, even if their Democratic tendencies decline with the generations, the Democrats benefit from more generations passing because the voting rate increases (not to mention children of illegal immigrants, the latter of which don't vote at all and make up a solid chunk of the population of Texas).

Still, I do think Hispanics will become a swing group, as Dgov said well:

You seem to be forgetting a key point here--Hispanics are ceasing to be an immigrant community in the United States.  There are more Hispanics in Texas than there are in Mexico who want to move to the United States (according to Gallup), and the "Hispanic Baby Boom" is starting to take hold.  They are gradually moving into suburban communities and up the income ladder.

So basically the second and third generations are starting to dominate the Hispanic society, and those voters tend to be Socially and Fiscally more in line with Republicans than with Democrats.  Take a look at the voting patterns of the immigrants from the late 1800s--they started out overwhelmingly Democrat when they were immigrant and poor, and now Lean Republican once they've moved up the income ladder and out to the suburbs.  Remember when the Democrats used to get ~80% of the Catholic vote?