When will Texas go blue?

[Landvaluetaxhateselderly]

My guess is by 2032. When will it be competitive?

[Catalyst138]

Really depends on if Democrats can stop/slow down the RGV exodus, and how fast the urban/suburban areas continue to trend D. It could first flip as early as 2024 or as late as 2036, there’s really no way to know.

[MABA 2020]

2028? There's no way to know, thats just a guess

[kwabbit]

It could be a while. I think people often forget that red states can come into play if the national environment is friendly enough to Democrats and still be red states. Texas voted 11 points to the right of the nation in 2016. It voted 11 points to the right of the nation in 2018. And t's gonna vote 10 points to the right of the nation in 2020. The big jump was from 2012/2014 to 2016, but I'm guessing Hillary just took the low-hanging college educated White fruit bc Texas has not zoomed left since. Especially now given the results in the RGV, it's unclear whether Democrats have the recipe to turn Texas blue. It would require significant improvements among non-White voters and college-educated whites, two groups who often move in opposite directions.

Texas has a small chance to go blue in 2024 if Biden is running as a popular incumbent who defeated Covid, but I don't see the ingredients for a massive Democratic victory on the scale that would be needed to flip Texas in any other near election. Maybe in 2032 things could change.

On another note, North Carolina is a case in point. It's had the same R+6 Partisan lean since 2008, but it was heralded as a new Democratic state after Obama's victory. It turns out that states barely won in a landslide are harder to win in non-landslides, something that escapes the Trend fanatics.