Houston, we have a problem

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Texas is actually an extremely urban state actually. I did some napkin math and around 72.5% of the state lives in DFW, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, and McAllen metro areas. El Paso and McAllen aren't as big as the other 4 but they still pack a good punch and each carry around the same weight that Albany NY and Baton Rogue LA have with over 850k people. Believe it or not, McAllen metro is actually slightly larger than El Paso's in population!

After that there is a significant decline in the population of metro areas (Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Beaumont, Lubbock, Waco, Amarillo, etc) are all between 200-400k. However, when people think of urban areas in Texas they mainly think about the top paragraph.

If you look at the main metros here is how they have been trending:
DFW-Dem
Houston-Slowly Dem
Austin-Rapidly Dem
San Antonio-Dem
El Paso-Neutral (Big swing left in 2016, but Trump recovered in 2020)
McAllen-Rapidly Republican

I think the most concerning thing for Dems in the state is the Houston area. It took a very big swing left in 2016, but has not pushed much further. In 2020, both Harris and Fort Bend barely moved towards Biden and is the only one of the big 4 metros where Abbott managed to do better than Trump 2016. The reason Harris county is <30% white and contains the 4th largest city in the US yet gives Republicans around 43% of the vote is because the Dem base doesn't show up. The turnout there is absolutely abysmal.

Harris county has a population of over 4.7M
San Diego county in CA has a population of 3.3M
In the 2020 election Harris county had only 236k votes casted despite having a significantly larger population. Maricopa county AZ is even slightly smaller than Harris county and still a lot more votes tabulated.

Fort Bend has better turnout due to having a more affluent Dem coalition, but until Dems can fix what's going on in Harris county, I don't see how they can ever flip the state. An affluent influx of suburbanites may help them in the other 3 metro areas, but in Houston they will need a strong core of diverse voters to turnout consistently.

[Schiff for Senate]

Nice analysis, and yeah, I also noticed that the Houston area's leftward swing in 2020 was very underwhelming. Harris trended rightward. The 2012-2016 swing was massive though. The 2010s congressional district with the biggest leftward swing from 2012 PRES to 2016 PRES was the Houston-area TX-07, which went from 60-39% Romney to 49-47% Clinton (this is the old TX-07, mind you - don't know how it goes with the 2022 congressional districts).

[Annatar]

One thing that is interesting is the shift in the GOP vote share in all the big counties except Travis is identical to the shift in the NHW share of the population between the 2010-2020 censuses. This is comparing Romney's vote share to Abbotts this year and looking at the change in the NHW share of the county.

Harris: NHW: 33 > 28, GOP: 49 > 44
Dallas: NHW: 33 > 27, GOP: 42 > 36
Tarrant: NHW: 52 > 43, GOP: 57 > 51
Denton: NHW: 64 > 56, GOP: 65 > 56
Collin: NHW: 63 > 51, GOP: 65 > 54
Williamson: NHW: 65 > 55, GOP: 59 > 49
Fort Bend: NHW: 36 > 30, GOP: 53 > 47
Bexar: NHW: 30 > 27, GOP: 47 > 41

This is the decline in the non hispanic white share vs the GOP decline

Harris: -5, -5
Dallas: -6, -6
Tarrant: -9, -6
Denton: - 8, -9
Collin: -8, -11
Williamson: -10, -10
Fort Bend: -6, -6
Bexar: -3, -6

Travis is different, NHW share only down 3%, GOP vote share down 10%, in Travis quite clear Republican decline among whites to a significant extent, less clear elsewhere.

[Del Tachi]

The odds were more stacked that usual against Texas Democrats this year, but they still managed to underperform expectations and lose every statewide office by double-digits.  The only Democrats to win in competitive state legislature races were moderates, especially those who ran as champions of border security.  State Representative Eddie Morales (D-Eagle Pass) easily won reelection in a targeted race, but he had to run on his support for Governor Abbot's border security bill in order to do it. 

[RRusso1982]

For all this talk of Texas trending left, the reality is, there is really nobody in the Texas Democratic party right now that has the stature to win statewide.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Nice analysis, and yeah, I also noticed that the Houston area's leftward swing in 2020 was very underwhelming. Harris trended rightward. The 2012-2016 swing was massive though. The 2010s congressional district with the biggest leftward swing from 2012 PRES to 2016 PRES was the Houston-area TX-07, which went from 60-39% Romney to 49-47% Clinton (this is the old TX-07, mind you - don't know how it goes with the 2022 congressional districts).

Clinton's campaign focused a lot on turning out hispanic and other minority groups so naturally there was a very big swing in the Houston area which is very diverse. Biden's 2020 campaign was more aimed at suburban white voters so we saw less of an affect in the Houston area then the other metros.