Heavy suburban swings against him in places like the DFW area. Biden flipped Tarrant, cut the margins heavily in Denton and Collin, ran up the score in Dallas proper, Austin, Houston, etc. Hillary and Beto had already done some of the work and he just continued those trends.
These suburban and college-educated white Democratic trends existed all over the country and are a big part of why Arizona and Georgia flipped outright. The South was not immune to them, and we’re seeing the education gap being more and more important as the racial gap becomes a bit less important. So even though Trump got big swings with Hispanics in the RGV, he still came closer to losing Texas than any Republican in years.
That’s also because of the numbers game; the places trending D rapidly are also those that are growing most rapidly while the places going the other way are stagnant or shrinking. That’s how Georgia swung over 5 points and flipped. If current trends continue in Texas (which voted about as R as GA did in 2016), it will flip eventually.
The Texas metro areas are not diversifying as much as the Atlanta metro area. There is no remedy to defend the notion that Trump overperformed. I am from Texas. Not only was Beth O'Rourke popular in Dem areas, Cruz was incredibly unpopular even with Trump voters. If Cornyn was on the ballot, I guarantee you he would've won by more. Cruz is a stick in the mud for Dems, because he is a tea party extremist and for Trumper because he refused to endorse Trump early on. In addition, there was a bit of a pushback in the RGV relative to 2016 and Georgia didn't have those massive swing against Biden in any counties.
Cornyn of course
was on the ballot last year, as you know, and he significantly outperformed Cruz, winning by over a million votes and nearly 10%. He also ran substantially ahead of Trump, who won by about 630,000 votes and 6%. And Abbott was reelected in 2018; he too significantly outperformed Cruz, winning by over a million votes and 13%.
This is total revisionist history as leading up to the election, anyone who said that Texas wouldn't be closer than it was in 2018 was gaslight repeatedly by many posters on this forum
I personally thought that Texas was competitive, and believed that it would be within a few points either way. I did not expect for Trump to make the gains in the Rio Grande Valley that he did, nor do I expect for him to squeeze out even more votes from Texas' vast rural and exurban areas. Biden barely improved over Clinton in Harris and Fort Bend Counties, and he didn't improve enough over her in Bexar, Dallas, or Travis Counties. He also did worse than O'Rourke in El Paso, Hays and Williamson Counties, and failed to flip back Jefferson County, which O'Rourke narrowly won.
