Elections Shuffler

[S019]

So I used the Shuffler to shift the counties with the strongest Trump trends back to Hillary 2016 margins

So, some interesting results, first it only shaves around a point off of Trump's margin in Texas, more importantly, the vast majority of said shaving off comes from three counties: Cameron, Hidalgo, Webb, the rest of the counties only shave around 0.2 off of Trump's margin, Hidalgo is the largest of the bunch, shaving off 0.45 off of Trump's margin. Cameron is the next largest, shaving off around 0.2, and Webb is the smallest, shaving off around 0.17.

So, thus three conclusions:

1. The RGV is not going to stop Blexas, it may delay it, but it alone won't prevent it.

2. It is a waste to spend time anywhere in the RGV except Hidalgo, Cameron, or Webb, the other counties simply don't have enough people to matter.

3. In the long term, the only people the RGV trend should affect is Gonzales and Cuellar.

(and a bonus one)

4. People were too quick to doom and gloom on Blexas following the RGV trend, forgot that is mostly rural and has few urbanized parts (and unsurprisingly, said urbanized places still gave double digit margins to Biden).

[S019]

So I used the Shuffler to shift the counties with the strongest Trump trends back to Hillary 2016 margins

So, some interesting results, first it only shaves around a point off of Trump's margin in Texas, more importantly, the vast majority of said shaving off comes from three counties: Cameron, Hidalgo, Webb, the rest of the counties only shave around 0.2 off of Trump's margin, Hidalgo is the largest of the bunch, shaving off 0.45 off of Trump's margin. Cameron is the next largest, shaving off around 0.2, and Webb is the smallest, shaving off around 0.17.

So, thus three conclusions:

1. The RGV is not going to stop Blexas, it may delay it, but it alone won't prevent it.

2. It is a waste to spend time anywhere in the RGV except Hidalgo, Cameron, or Webb, the other counties simply don't have enough people to matter.

3. In the long term, the only people the RGV trend should affect is Gonzales and Cuellar.

(and a bonus one)

4. People were too quick to doom and gloom on Blexas following the RGV trend, forgot that is mostly rural and has few urbanized parts (and unsurprisingly, said urbanized places still gave double digit margins to Biden).

Texas only trended one point towards the democrats in the past 4 years

that's why my first comment said "it alone won't prevent it" and sure there are valid reasons to be skeptical of a Blue Texas, such as Houston barely budging, but this shows that the takes about the RGV becoming reliably Republican dooming chances of Blue Texas are very overblown. Also I'll note Dem growth in the metros is pretty significant, even if the RGV doesn't revert to the norm, there is more upside for Democrats in the state, making inroads in once reliably Republican areas in the Metroplex, which shows no signs of stopping. Massive Dem swings in the Metroplex and I-35 are already occurring and show little signs of stopping, swings in Houston could be the final part of the recipe to Blue Texas. However, Houston is a place which rather than barely budging, budged in different directions in different places, which makes it hard to analyze. Analysis about Texas is much more complex than "it only trended one point," it is important to look at why that happened to see if that is a sustainable pattern long term, and as I noted earlier, urban Hispanics had much weaker swings to Republicans than rural Hispanics (well outside of Miami, but that's it's own monster due to the high Cuban population), also it seems pretty clear that urban Hispanics would be much easier to win back than rural ones, which makes me much more optimistic about growing in Houston than say Zapata or Starr.