Will the Texas abortion law make Texas swing R?

[Woody]

Right after the law passed, I saw numerous posts by liberals on Reddit & Twitter already making plans to leave Texas, citing the new law as one of the reasons. Will this along with possible future conservative legislation cause a mass outflow of liberals out of the state?

[Epaminondas]

Unlikely, it's an expression of anger.

Any families with the economic freedom to leave the state for such a hypothetical have the finances to cross state borders for an abortion in NM.

[Big Abraham]

Lots of people also declared they would leave America if Hillary lost to Trump. Look how well that turned out.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Lol it's and R state Castro bros and Joaquin aren't giving a safe D seat up to run for Sen or Gov, and McCounghey shows no signs of running and Beto shows no sign of beating Abbott, he would lose like D's will lose in FL, that's the oy thing I agree with UWS on

Right wing Fox will tear Beto apart again

[DPKdebator]

You will get a few people who are going to be put off by the law enough to not move to Texas (or leave if they already live there), but it'll probably be pretty negligible.

[Inmate Trump]

The abortion law makes Texas an even swingier swing state.  This will hurt Republicans.

[Sir Mohamed]

Tbh, I don't think it has any effect for 2024. Not even 2022. There's some outrage among liberals now and some "joy" among conservatives, almost no one will change voting patterns because of this 3 years down the road. As bad as the law is in my opinion, too few people are actually impacted by this in real life, let alone to a degree to change their votes or turn out if they didn't before.

Depending on the national environment and the result, TX may shift 2-3 pts to the Dems or slightly R with a different candidate or a GOP overall victory. But that's all for different reasons.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The abortion law makes Texas an even swingier swing state.  This will hurt Republicans.

No it doesn't Biden is stuck in the mid 40s like Trump was, it's not a Natl ban it's a state by state issue

[Ferguson97]

Lots of people also declared they would leave America if Hillary lost to Trump. Look how well that turned out.

While I agree there won't be a mass exodus of liberals leaving Texas because of this law... there is a massive, massive difference between moving to a different state and moving to a different country.

[Houstonian Sock]

Texas is a great state, people shouldnt leave

[I’m not Stu]

The population in Texas will grow.

[MarkD]

Right after the law passed, I saw numerous posts by liberals on Reddit & Twitter already making plans to leave Texas, citing the new law as one of the reasons. Will this along with possible future conservative legislation cause a mass outflow of liberals out of the state?

I doubt the abortion bill by itself would cause liberal Texans to want to move away, but after a lot of conservative bills are passed, then that might cause them to move (just like a lot of conservative Californians have been moving out of that state).

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

No, the steady stream of liberals will continue from California and NYC.  The Democratic trend will continue.

Republicans have already shot themselves in the foot with college educated voters in Texas with Trump.  They are doing it again with this terrible abortion law.

[pbrower2a]

If anything (unless Texas should be so crass as to criminalize leaving the state for a lawful abortion in another state) it should have the opposite effect.

[PSOL]

The new law will galvanize itself into a rallying cry for the Democratic Party.

[Chips]

Tbh, I don't think it has any effect for 2024. Not even 2022. There's some outrage among liberals now and some "joy" among conservatives, almost no one will change voting patterns because of this 3 years down the road. As bad as the law is in my opinion, too few people are actually impacted by this in real life, let alone to a degree to change their votes or turn out if they didn't before.

Depending on the national environment and the result, TX may shift 2-3 pts to the Dems or slightly R with a different candidate or a GOP overall victory. But that's all for different reasons.

Agreed.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

It's already a red state no one is running against Abbott

[MargieCat]

No it will make the state swing leftwards.

Still an R-leaning state.

Texas was roughly R+10 this cycle but Cook Political Report says its an R+5 state (which I don't really get).

With the new law, it might now be R+8 instead of R+10.

[THG]

I don't know if this will chase liberals out of the state, though I don't think that liberals are exactly going to move en masse into Texas either. I think many of them would rather go to Colorado at this point.

I also believe that this abortion bill will help Republicans with Hispanics a tad bit.


So overall, I actually agree with Woodbury's assessment.

[MT Treasurer]

Texas was roughly R+10 this cycle but Cook Political Report says its an R+5 state (which I don't really get).

Cook goes by %-age of the vote the D/R candidate received, not margin. In the case of Trump:

2016:
Nationally: 46%
Texas: 52%

2020:
Nationally: 47%
Texas: 52%

Approx. R+6 and R+5, basically averages out to R+5.

[Skill and Chance]

No.  The group of people who are even able to move for political reasons is small.  The group of people actually interested in doing it is even smaller, vanishingly small relative to election outcomes in a large.  Also, a left-leaning person in the second group generally wouldn't be in Texas in the first place, given that it was even more conservative in the recent past. 

Where this kind of stuff could have an impact is in the smallest states.  A Fortune 500 tech company opening an HQ in Wyoming or an Fortune 500 manufacturing company opening a giant plant in Vermont really could flip those states by employing a majority of adult residents.  But even then, people would be moving primarily for the job/cost of living. 

The 19th century railroads more or less did this in several western states.  Today, FAANG could effectively control 10 senators between them if they each picked a different Interior West/Plains state to relocate the HQ to post-COVID.