Why is Caldwell County Texas so inelastic?

[Arizona Iced Tea]

2000: Bush+14
2004: Bush+12
2008: McCain+6
2012: Romney+11
2016: Trump+15
2020: Trump+9

For a county in the Austin metro area you would expect it to make massive swings left and be solidly blue by now, but it seems inelastically locked to to high single digits, low double digits R margins.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It is sort of misleading to call it an "Austin metro" county.

It is nothing like Williamson County or Hays county, and only has relatively slow population growth. It has only gained about 10k people in the last 20 years.

Compare that to Williamson County, which has gained nearly 400k people in the same time and more than doubled in size.

Caldwell is more similar to a county like Burnett County (over to the east of Austin) - near Austin, but not really part of Austin as such. And while I have not looked, I am pretty sure if you look at election results there you will also not see too much change. The main difference there would be that Burnett has a lower Hispanic population.

In addition to the fact that Caldwell has changed way less than real Austin-metro counties, it also used to be relatively receptive to Dems like other rural counties in east-central Texas, so it had some ancestral Dems for a while. As ancestral Dem tendencies died down, in other rural counties further from Austin this caused them to swing R. But in Caldwell, this was offset by the arrival of some Austin-influenced voters (even though that growth is not large, there is still a bit of it), which was enough to prevent the county from trending as much Republican as other ruralish counties, but not enough to swing it substantially Dem like has happened with Williamson and Hays.

[TML]

Demographically speaking, this county has a very low share of voters with higher education (only about 17% have a college degree), and although Hispanics comprise the majority of the population, the lion's share of them consider themselves white, not people of color, so it doesn't have the demographic ingredients that has made many other suburban counties shift significantly leftward in recent years.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Agreed with what other posters have said, but I think in coming elections there’s a good chance it starts zooming left as Austin’s influence spills over into it and the GOP finishes peeling off whatever remaining ancestral Dems may exist.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

doesn't have the demographic ingredients that has made many other suburban counties shift

It is literally just not at all a suburban county in the first place. Look at some satellite photos or google streetview to see.

Here is Mendoza TX (population 100 or so), which is in the far north-west corner of the county. This is the part of the county that is CLOSEST to Austin:



Caldwell county is just Lockhart (a small town like other small towns) plus the surrounding rural area.

Meanwhile this is in nearby Niederwald:



That is an actual suburban housing development. But... that is just over the county line in Hays County, not Caldwell.

Until that sort of thing starts reaching into Mendoza, it is inaccurate to even call the very closest part of Caldwell county "suburban," much less to call the entire county a "suburban" county.

[wnwnwn]

Its an exurban county.

[Boobs]

Caldwell County is interesting historically when considering the patterns of the Anglo settlement of Texas, the county being among the "edge" of the traditional Southern economic system of planation slavery:



while today being the northeastern-most Hispanic majority county in Texas. Obviously, the voting base there is majority white, and really more of the "Southern exurban" type of white vote. Citizen voting age population in Caldwell is 48 NHW - 43 H - 7 B, and voted 54-45 Trump; compare this to Bastrop County directly north, which is 63 NHW - 27 H - 8 B, and voted a similar 56-42 for Trump; there doesn't exist a "suburban white (or nonwhite, honestly) voter" base in Caldwell like there is in Bastrop (in a place like Elgin), let alone Hays, Williamson or Travis counties. Caldwell's relative closeness is a factor of its diversity and relatively high Hispanic vote rather than from suburbanization.

Why? Roads, probably. I-35 effectively chose winners and losers, Hays and Williamson were huge winners because of convenience. TX-130 is the highway between Austin and Lockhart, but it doesn't have high traffic other than Austinites going to I-10; it's also where the highest posted speed limits in the US are (85mph). It was only opened in the late 80s or 90s (prior to its development it was, and still is, US-183), I believe, and worst of all, is a toll road; this restricted capacity and usage makes Caldwell an unattractive place for Austin commuters to live. US-290 (Austin, Manor, to Elgin) has been far more convenient and probably will result in that area growing more so than Caldwell. Obviously neither compare to I-35 and other north-south oriented roads that make Hays and Williamson more attractive areas for development.