Texas swing

[old timey villain]

Anybody surprised by the big swing in Texas this year? I didn't think the rural areas could get any more Republican but they did, and a lot of them were very hard swings. Harris County swung despite becoming more diverse in the past four years, but what's more surprising is that Travis County TX (Austin) swung even more strongly than Harris- I thought this was an increasingly liberal area. A lot of south Texas swung towards Obama but large swaths went more for Romney which is the most surprising to me considering Obama's awesome performance with Hispanics.

The only meaningful swing towards Obama was Dallas County, which is strange since it's long been thought of as a very conservative city with an evangelical streak. All the talk of Texas being a future swing state now seems unwarranted.

[old timey villain]

Anybody surprised by the big swing in Texas this year? I didn't think the rural areas could get any more Republican but they did, and a lot of them were very hard swings. Harris County swung despite becoming more diverse in the past four years, but what's more surprising is that Travis County TX (Austin) swung even more strongly than Harris- I thought this was an increasingly liberal area. A lot of south Texas swung towards Obama but large swaths went more for Romney which is the most surprising to me considering Obama's awesome performance with Hispanics.

The only meaningful swing towards Obama was Dallas County, which is strange since it's long been thought of as a very conservative city with an evangelical streak. All the talk of Texas being a future swing state now seems unwarranted.

I was surprised he didn't do well in Austin. But that's it. But I still think TX still has the potential to become a swing state due to demographics, plus many of the Hispanic counties still went for Obama (which is a promising sign for that prediction), and the big cities mainly swung to Romney because a lot of the conservatives who didn't vote in 08 at all (due to McCain's moderate positions) voted in 12 and went heavily for Romney.

I'm shocked you thought Dallas was conservative, it really isn't a conservative city at all, it's suburbs are.

I've never been to Dallas, but I've been to Houston. All I ever heard was that Houston was more diverse and had more of a Hispanic feel, while Dallas had more of a cowboy culture, so I figured it was more conservative. I guess I also forgot to realize that the Dallas metro as a whole may be more conservative that Houston, but Dallas county is just much more urban than Harris which contains the city of Houston as well as a lot of suburbs.

[old timey villain]

Denton county (one of the depressingly blue ones directly north of Dallas county) is where most of the evangelicals live now...Dallas county's pretty diverse, to say the least.

I always thought of Denton county and the suburbs around Dallas as ground zero for white evangelical Christians living in their McMansions, is there anywhere else in the country that has a greater concentration, maybe suburban Atlanta?

Yes, North Fulton specifically. There is a huge mega church in Alpharetta called North Point that has at least 10,000 members. The area is very wealthy and well educated but it's remained very conservative partly because of the evangelical culture there. But it's more Colorado Springs than Bible Belt religiosity.

Houston would also count too. Joel Osteen's church is there and it's massive. And then of course you have Orange County, CA....