Rate Starr county TX

[lfromnj]

https://mobile.twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1408182902978977802

Safe R this will be played in ads throughout the RGV.
/s

[Real Texan Politics]

For the lolz, safe R.

Realistically, tossup but possibly lean R if it’s DeSantis vs Harris.

[Chips]

Toss-up.

[Karenthecomputer]

Lean R. Dems are obviously losing ground here, but it could narrowly stay Dem once more.

I kind of saw Starr 2020 like Elliott 2012 in terms of losing Dem support in such a demographic.

[MATTROSE94]

Safe Republican. Donald Trump probably wins Starr County by around 50-60%.

[Bootes Void]

It's Joeover

[Schiff for Senate]

I seriously hope Biden carries Starr - this is a county that gave Clinton, Hillary Clinton, a 60% margin of victory. Biden can't afford to lose here - if he does, it would be a testament to his unpopularity.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Likely D

[SN2903]

Likely R

[Dr. MB]

wait until 2022 to see how it votes (and if 2020 trends hold up then) to make any serious predictions here

[TML]

Remember that the 2020 result came mostly from new voters rather than converting previously Democratic voters. It seems that most of these new Republican voters were “Tejanos” rather than “Latinos” - i.e. people whose families have been in the US for generations rather than recent arrivals. We first need to see whether this kind of turnout can be sustained with Trump off the ballot.

[redjohn]

With Trump as the nominee, it probably flips, so lean R. It depends, though, on how much Trump was helped in the area by incumbency and effects unique to COVID. I could see it swinging D, just because I don't see Trump doing much better than he did in 2020.

[Meatball Ron]

I seriously hope Biden carries Starr - this is a county that gave Clinton, Hillary Clinton, a 60% margin of victory. Biden can't afford to lose here - if he does, it would be a testament to his unpopularity.

Considering this county only has 60K people, and only 17K voters in the high-turnout environment of 2020, I don't really think it's fair to say his performance in the county is a testament to anything broader than political micro-trends in the small RGV region - certainly not Biden's popularity more broadly. A very, very small leftward shift in a few suburbs of Austin, Dallas, or Houston would drastically outweigh any further rightward shifts in the RGV (actually - this isn't even a hypothetical - just look at Biden's overall margin in TX versus Clinton's despite the RGV shifts). I'm not saying we should be ignoring this region, but we shouldn't be extrapolating much from it either.

[Schiff for Senate]

I seriously hope Biden carries Starr - this is a county that gave Clinton, Hillary Clinton, a 60% margin of victory. Biden can't afford to lose here - if he does, it would be a testament to his unpopularity.

Considering this county only has 60K people, and only 17K voters in the high-turnout environment of 2020, I don't really think it's fair to say his performance in the county is a testament to anything broader than political micro-trends in the small RGV region - certainly not Biden's popularity more broadly. A very, very small leftward shift in a few suburbs of Austin, Dallas, or Houston would drastically outweigh any further rightward shifts in the RGV (actually - this isn't even a hypothetical - just look at Biden's overall margin in TX versus Clinton's despite the RGV shifts). I'm not saying we should be ignoring this region, but we shouldn't be extrapolating much from it either.

Yes, you're right, but I think that
a.) the leftward shift in urban/suburban Texas is going to slow down, and Democrats should still try not to bleed votes in the RGV.
b.) it's still concerning why the Rio Grand Valley, with a majority-Hispanic population, has shifted red. First of all, it could be the deciding factor in a few years - if in 2028 or 2032 Texas is extremely close (which is possible given the leftward shift it has undergone), the RGV's votes could end up deciding which way the state's 40 electoral votes will go - and possibly with it, the election. Also, it represents an erosion of Democratic support among Hispanics - which Democrats cannot afford. Aside from possibly costing them Texas in the future, lack of Democratic support among Hispanics very possibly cost the Democrats Florida in the 2020 presidential race. The RGV and Southeast Florida shifted hard to the right - and that could affect or impact both Florida's results (as it probably did in 2020; Trump expanded his margin by over 2% as his national margin of loss expanded by 2% as well) and Texas' in a future election (for example, and this is hypothetical, what if in 2024, Ted Cruz faces tough reelection, like he did in 2018? What if, in that scenario, he ends up winning narrowly because his opponent, be it Beto O'Rourke or someone else, did poorly in the Rio Grand Valley?).

A somewhat unrelated sidenote - I read an article about why the GOP made gains in South Texas, which explained that:
a.) like other rural areas, South Texans are protective of their guns;
b.) many of them work in law enforcement and/or at border security, giving them an imperative to crack down on illegal immigration and/or support a wall;
c.) many of them work at jobs involving oil, putting them at odds with the Democrats' pro-environment position.
My only question is this: How did Joe Biden, or for that matter Hillary Clinton, win in a place with guns, oil and a lot of policing jobs? I mean, given these three facts, South TX should be a GOP stronghold to begin with - not a Democratic stronghold as it was and to an extent remains. (Starr County, TX, the topic of this thread, voted for Clinton by 60% and Biden by 5%. I'm pretty sure in any generic county with a lot of oil jobs, law enforcement jobs, and guns, Trump would win by 60%.)

[Schiff for Senate]

Remember that the 2020 result came mostly from new voters rather than converting previously Democratic voters. It seems that most of these new Republican voters were “Tejanos” rather than “Latinos” - i.e. people whose families have been in the US for generations rather than recent arrivals. We first need to see whether this kind of turnout can be sustained with Trump off the ballot.

Exactly; I believe that while Biden carried the same number of raw votes as Clinton in Starr County, Trump more than tripled the number of votes he received in Starr County (which usually suffers from very low turnout rates), explaining how he did better. In a midterm, I think GOP turnout could fall by a lot, especially since Trump won't be on the ballot. In this case, Starr may well give the Democrats a more solid margin (like 25-30%).

[beesley]

Never seen one of these polls be so divided. Anyway, I'd say Tossup/Lean D, but what do I know this far out.

[Utah Neolib]

Lean D