Was Texas "taken" from Biden?

[electionsguy259]

In 2021, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stated on Steve Bannon's podcast, War Room, that Biden would have won the Texas in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election had he not prevented mail-in-ballot applications from being sent out to registered voters in Harris County (Houston).

Does this claim have any truth? Trump won Texas by 5.58% (around 631k votes), still a significant margin. I doubt that Paxton's actions would have changed the statewide results, but I am not sure.

[Tekken_Guy]

No. Trump won it fair and square.

[Sumner 1868]

Illegal immigrants clearly stole Texas for Trump because of his taco bowl.

[Pericles]

So Republicans are now boasting that they've rigged elections, WTAF. It's such a good thing to them that they want people to think they do it even when they haven't?

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

Doesn't seem like that lead could've been overcome (and Texas still hasn't voted blue since 1976, and 2020 was only a moderately pro-Democratic year), but it would've been interesting trying to see Trump overturn the election with under 200 electoral votes.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is empty braggadocio.

[Dave Hedgehog]

How could it have been "taken" from Biden and Democrats when they haven't won the state in decades? Regardless of how it may have shifted left a bit during the Trump years, it's still going to vote for a bad R over any D for a little while yet. Case in point: Ken Paxton, last year.

[Stranger in a strange land]

In 2021, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stated on Steve Bannon's podcast, War Room, that Biden would have won the Texas in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election had he not prevented mail-in-ballot applications from being sent out to registered voters in Harris County (Houston).

Does this claim have any truth? Trump won Texas by 5.58% (around 631k votes), still a significant margin. I doubt that Paxton's actions would have changed the statewide results, but I am not sure.

I very much doubt it, but it would be fairly easy to calculate. The numbers you'd need are:
- Trump's margin of victory in Texas
- The number of registered voters in Harris county who didn't vote, which I was able to find via a quick google search here: https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/historical/harris.shtml
- The estimated proportion of registered voters who didn't vote who would have voted if they'd gotten a mail-in-ballot application
- The estimated percentage of those who would have gone for Trump: per FiveThirtyEight, TRUMP won absentee ballots in Texas by 3 points! https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-absentee-voting-looked-like-in-all-50-states/. Biden probably won them in Harris county, sure, but there's no way he would have won additional absentees by enough to overcome Trump's statewide margin.

Also, as we saw from the 2020 Early Voting Thread on this forum, Democrats "cannibalized" a lot of their election day vote, but at the same time banked it in early voting. Republicans did too, but not as much, as evidenced by the GOP encouraging their voters to vote by mail even while decrying VBM as fraudulent. A lot of the increase in absentee voting in other states was people who would otherwise have voted on election day voting early, not new voters.

[Pres Mike]

No. And probably would not have made Texas much closer

[Mr. Smith]

No, Biden squandered it fair and square, just like Hillary did to AZ/GA in 2016

[johndavid2372]

No, Trump won Texas legitimately since rural parts of the state are conservative (especially the East Texas region and the cities of Marshall, Tyler, and Longview). And I think those rural voters would offset any mail-in vote counting.

[holtridge]

I voted for Biden and I say no it wasn't.  Texas was not ready to be a battleground in 2020. It will be much closer next November and by 2028 it will be a battleground state.

[DrScholl]

It would be hard to suppress that many votes so that is more of a exaggeration of Paxton's part, but the fact that he admits he used his position to take action to benefit Trump is an ethical breach.

[pbrower2a]

This would also had to have happened in Dallas, El Paso, Bexar (San Antonio), Travis (Austin), Cameron (Brownsville and Harlingen), and Tarrant (Fort Worth) Counties.

So what about 2024? Texas is becoming more like a microcosm of America. Other states such as Ohio and Wisconsin might become less so, but wht the heck? Texas is an electoral behemoth, and it is no longer in the pocket of the Republican Party.

[Reactionary Libertarian]

No, Biden squandered it fair and square, just like Hillary did to AZ/GA in 2016

Squandered? States flip when they are ready.

[DS0816]

Re: [In 2020,] Was Texas “taken” from [Joe] Biden?

No.

Joe Biden, with his 2020 Democratic pickup of the presidency of the United States, won the U.S. Popular Vote by +4.45 percentage points. Let’s call it +4.

With exception of 1992, winning Democrats since 1960 have carried +21 or +22 states in excess of their U.S. Popular Vote percentage-points margin.

Biden ended up with 25 carried states.

Of the states he did not carry, Nos. 26 to 30 were:

26. North Carolina
27. Florida
28. Texas
— Maine’s 2nd Congressional District
29. Ohio
30. Iowa


So, what this suggests is that each of these needed the following percentage-points magin in the U.S. Popular Vote for a 2020 Joe Biden to have carried any of them. So…

26. North Carolina (U.S. Popular Vote: +5)
27. Florida (U.S. Popular Vote: +6)
28. Texas (U.S. Popular Vote: +7)
— Maine’s 2nd Congressional District (U.S. Popular Vote: +7.50)
29. Ohio (U.S. Popular Vote: +8)
30. Iowa (U.S. Popular Vote: +9)

Joe Biden, in 2020, did not reach the necessary numbers to be able to flip and carry Texas.