Rate Starr County, TX

[Spectator]

Likely R. I think it will be a Trump/Allred county. Trump, and to a lesser extent, Abbott in 2022, remain the only Republicans to make notable headway in the RGV, so I'm withholding my judgment on the area's permanent shift to the GOP. All other statewide Dems in 2022 won the RGV easily.

I think the impact of hispanic voting behavior is one of the most overrated things electorally. They don't vote in significant numbers to generally affect the vast majority of races in swing states. Dems still won Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico in 2020 and 2022 despite those Trump-favorable swings in hispanic communities, and Biden even expanded upon Hillary's performances in all those states, and Texas. Texas still swung and trended blue despite the RGV's shift.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Likely R. I think it will be a Trump/Allred county. Trump, and to a lesser extent, Abbott in 2022, remain the only Republicans to make notable headway in the RGV, so I'm withholding my judgment on the area's permanent shift to the GOP. All other statewide Dems in 2022 won the RGV easily.

I think the impact of hispanic voting behavior is one of the most overrated things electorally. They don't vote in significant numbers to generally affect the vast majority of races in swing states. Dems still won Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico in 2020 and 2022 despite those Trump-favorable swings in hispanic communities, and Biden even expanded upon Hillary's performances in all those states, and Texas. Texas still swung and trended blue despite the RGV's shift.

To be fair in 2022 while other Dems did better in the valley, no one got close to pre-2018 Dem numbers.

[Schiff for Senate]

Worth noting that in 2022, while Abbott did win places like Zapata the downballot Rs did not. Even the railroad commisioner who won Fort Bend and won the election by 15 points still lost Zapata by 8 points. It seems that for right now at least the RGV is still okay with downticket Democrats but they love Trump there. If Starr county flips it will likely be a Trump/Allred county, but I think Zapata will go for Cruz this year.

This, plus in races like railroad commissioner Dem having a Hispanic surname likely helped.

Warford's a "Hispanic surname?"

[ProgressiveModerate]

This is a pretty crazy distribution - good number of people who think likely/safe Biden and good number who think likely/safe Trump. Really a Starr County moment.

[Ragnaroni]

Safe Trump.

Perhaps not by margin, but I am absolutely certain Trump wins it.

We will literally see the whole or almost the whole RGV flip red.

It will be perhaps the most significant and thorough political realignment since Appalachia went full R in 2000.

And just like that one, it will not be reversed any time soon. In fact things will just get more and more grim for Ds as Hispanics continue to assimilate more and more into "white America." Turns out maybe "demographics are destiny" was right, it just failed to account for the M. Night Shyamalan style twist that Hispanics would turn to the Republican side in the end. Although honestly, considering the exact same thing happened to Irish/Italians/etc. in the past, it really shouldn't have been surprising in the slightest. We were naive fools to ever dream otherwise. Texas and Florida are completely off the table for Democrats for the foreseeable future, Nevada will likely become a titanium lean R state, New Mexico a pure toss-up, and Arizona's fate will depend on whether the shift in the white suburbanite vote can keep up with the opposing shift in the Hispanic working class vote.

The war to decide the next political realignment and, consequently, the next political era of the United States, was always going to be decided by Hispanic voters at the end of the day. And it seems clear now that they are going to give the edge to the GOP. Democrats are going to be flailing in the political wilderness for a while like we did in the 1980s (except for the ironic fact that our core base will be what was then the GOP's core base -- white educated voters), until the next Clinton/Obama comes along who can get people to cross over to vote D again.

Turns out we won the battle but lost the war in 2020. Turns out, by god, maybe BRTD was right all along about idpol bulls--t like "Latinx" being absolutely toxic cancer. Turns out maybe people care more about how much their groceries cost than gender affirming care or whatever the f--k nonsense  "progressives" are endlessly rambling about on Twitter.

We did this to ourselves. We have no one to blame but ourselves. There will need to be a serious soul-searching and reckoning after the worst human being on the face of the Earth manages to win the biggest Republican landslide in November since 1988.

This is a well thought out post, I'd argue that assimilating into "White America" does tend to turn people to the Republican camp. Look at the turn of the century : those immigrants were Democrats until their kids assimilated and now their descendants are heavily Republican (outside of college educated women and like super urban people).

[ProgressiveModerate]

Another weird thing I found out today about Starr County is that there was a pretty significant vote drop-off for down ballot races in 2020.

For instance:

Biden 9148 --> Hegar 8177
Trump 8260 --> Cornyn 5851

We also saw this in 2022 where there was a vote dropoff from Gov to other races:

Beto 6454 --> 4939 Garza
Abbott 4460 --> 3289 Paxton

These dropoff voters seem like a possible reason for why down ballot results are better for Dems. Zapata County also sees similar drop-offs, but not the other border counties interestingly. Any idea why this is the case specifically here and in Zapata?

[cg41386]

This is a well thought out post, I'd argue that assimilating into "White America" does tend to turn people to the Republican camp. Look at the turn of the century : those immigrants were Democrats until their kids assimilated and now their descendants are heavily Republican (outside of college educated women and like super urban people).

You thought THAT was a well thought out post? Yikes.