Recently, I've been seeing a lot of theories about how a rightwards shift amongst Hispanics, in particular those, with lower educational attainment could keep Texas in the GOP column for a while.
I agree with the premise that Hispanics have great potential to shift further right. I also agree this could cost Dems dearly in RGV over the coming decade.
However, I don't think increasing their margins with Hispanics is their path to victory in Texas. It's more about turning out their voters in urban centers, which are notoriously very poor in heavily minority parts of Dallas and Houston in particular (well below 30% and into the 20s in many cases). For reference, this on par with the RGV which has a more notorious reputation for being low turnout.
This map shows the change in net votes by congressional districts from 2016 Pres - 2020 Pres. While it is true that a rightwards shift of Hispanics cost Dems in RGV, higher voter turnout negated the heavily rightwards shifts seen in districts like TX-09 and TX-18. Heavily blue TX-30 which barely shifted net Biden as many votes as TX-03 which saw a 14% shift to the left.
Austin is already high turnout, but it's insane growth should mean that no matter what happens the metro will continue to net more and more votes for Dems
San Antonio turnout isn't as great but it doesn't seem to be as bad as Dallas or Houston
Also generally, the cities are all growing faster than the rest of the state which means Dems have a bit more a padding to do worse in the cities in order to win statewide.
I did a study a while back on here (Can't find thread rn but I promise I did) that found equalizing turnout across Texas by precinct would bring Texas to just Trump + ~2, shifting it 3 points left. Remember too that in this turnout equitization project, high turnout blue places like Austin were equalized to be lower. I might go back and retest what happens if Travis County is unaffected
On the flip side, raising turnout in rural Texas can be the GOP's strategy for keeping the state, however, turnout in these regions isn't as poor as Dallas and Houston in particular.
So overall, I don't think this narrative that Hispanics shifting right will keep Texas red is accurate, nor is the narrative that Dems must win over white suburbanites to pull Texas left for that matter. Obviously, both would have an impact, but neither is destiny nor the only possibility
While I do not believe that blue Texas is destiny, if I were the GOP I would be very concerned because overall the states population shifts are very unfavorable to them
What do you think?
You need to make sure for those new turnouts, who do they vote. It may be the case that Trump turned out a lot of low propensity Hispanic voters, who voted for R.
I tend to believe as Hispanic turnout increase, they vote closer to the white.
I do agree that TX will be more competitive, but there are no enough evidence that it will flip like CO and VA. It may end up a larger NC.
