The death of the rural Texas Democrat, as told by party primary participation

[Indy Texas]

Texas has no party registration, so the below maps use participation in party primary elections to infer party identification by comparing Republican primary turnout to Democratic primary turnout as a percentage of total primary turnout. Only off-year primaries are used, since presidential primary participation is impacted by how competitive the presidential races are and those races tend to attract more independent voters.

In 1994, nearly two thirds of primary voters opted to vote in the Democratic primary. Republican participation was strongest in the DFW Metroplex, the suburbs of major cities, the German Hill Country counties and the Panhandle. Note the large number of West Texas counties that didn't even hold a Republican primary.



Republican participation grew in 1998, dwarfing Democratic turnout, but most of this growth came from the suburbs. That year's general election marked the first time in history that Democrats did not win a single statewide office.



2002 was arguably the last gasp of relevance for the Texas Democratic Party. All of the excitement was on their side and hopes were high for that year's "Dream Team" - Tony Sanchez, John Sharp, and Ron Kirk - to win back some of the Republicans' recent gains. The 2002 elections were also the last time the Democrats won a majority of Texas's US House seats; but the Republicans captured the State House for the first time since Reconstruction, enabling them to force through a mid-decade redistricting to ensure a Republican majority in the state's congressional delegation.



By 2006, the Democrats' hold on rural Texas was beginning to atrophy. While South Texas continued to have many counties not even bother holding a Republican Primary, the Democrats' identification advantage among rural Anglos became increasingly confined to East Texas and the cotton counties of the High Plains.



2010 was the year the bottom truly fell out for the Democrats outside of the Hispanic southern part of the state. Heavy Republican participation in suburbs gave the GOP a turnout advantage even in large counties like Harris and Dallas. Democratic participation collapsed in rural counties and the number of counties where no Democratic primary took place increased to eight, from five in 2006. A handful of counties in East Texas and the High Plains continued to participate almost exclusively in the Democratic primary. Foard County is one of the notable holdouts in rural Texas - no Republican primary was held in 2010 and Bill White narrowly carried the county in November.

[Indy Texas]

What does it mean that there was "no Republican primary"? That there was no way for people in those counties to vote for e.g. Rick Perry in the primary? Surely not. Is it local offices?

jimrtex has a good explanation in Miles's link. But yes - basically, there is no way for people in the dark red counties with asterisks to have voted in the Republican Primary, for any office at any level, even if they wanted to, because the GOP had no county chair in those counties. (Though if you can't even manage to find someone willing to be the chair, which in a small county is a pretty nominal post with little actual obligation, there probably aren't many people who want to vote in that primary to begin with.) And conversely, the people in the dark blue counties with asterisks could not vote in the Democratic primary because the Democrats had no chairs in those counties.

This isn't a great system, particularly for rural counties that are so short on people. In 2012, there was some controversy over the Republican primaries in a couple of West Texas counties that are heavily Republican not taking place because the county chair unexpectedly moved out of the county and a replacement couldn't be found in time. In another county, the party chair moved away between the primary and the runoff, meaning citizens there got to vote in the primary but not the runoff.