Trump the first Republican to win Texas Latinos. Does this delay Blexas indefinitely?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Trump didn't win Texas Latinos and definitely not by 10 points. If I had to guess Harris County Latinos are probably where Texas Latinos as a whole vote . (RGV/ and other counties vote to the right while Dallas/San Antonio are more left wing) TX 29th still voted Harris +18. It is 15% black and 8% white though. The whites would definitely be a significant portion of the total vote, maybe 2 or 3 of those are 8 are downtown swing votes but the remaining 5% in Pasadena are quite R. Blacks should be pretty heavily D though and probably net more votes for Dems than whites did for R's If I had to guess Hispanics voted D+10 in the seat so D+10 statewide? Trump still did better with TX Latinos than Bush though.

I have thoughts on this

First as another poster already pointed out, Harris almost certainly won TX Hispanics albiet by a far smaller margin than any recent Dems.

However, I think the 14% margin Trump won by was also because of other factors - it seems like turnout was disproportionately down in Dem areas from 2020 for instance, and in many ways this electorate resembled something closer to 2022 than 2020.

It definitely is a concern for Dems though given Hispanics are the 2nd largest group in the state and I think this is true up and down the ballot - if Rs start sweeping all the South TX state House districts it makes it pretty hard to see Dems winning the legislature this decade.

It’s also unclear to what extent Trump’s nonwhite numbers in TX represent the norm going forwards vs a unique strength to him. In 2012 for instance Romney had a very strong performance and swung the TX metros right because of his absurdly strong showing with college educated whites, but that only ended up being a one cycle thing. Also Allred generally held up better with non-whites and put up the best Dem performer ever in many of these suburban communities.

Finally if you look at the swing map, especially at the precinct level - the underlying trends that have benefited Dems (growth) are still there - it’s not a coincidence Kaufman County is the fastest growing County in the state and shifted 6% left despite the national circumstances and having a fairly large nonwhite population.

And relative to 2008/2012 TX has still had one of the stronger swings/trends to the left of the nation.

I think Blue TX is less likely heading into 2028 than I would’ve thought pre-election, but I don’t think it’s done either.

TLDR: Hard to tell to what extent Trump’s 2024 performance here is representative of future TX elections/electorates - this result seems like a perfect storm of things going right for TX Rs.

Fair enough, but besides pointing out a single congressional district, do you two have any strong evidence to back this claim that Democrats probably won hispanic voters in the state?

If you add up the exit poll data and extrapolate it to the statewide vote, that would give Trump just under 55% of the vote and Kamilla Harris just over 43% of the vote—pretty close to the margin we actually saw. If you assume that the margin amongst Hispanics was closer to 55-45 for the Democrats, that gives you a spread of 52-46, which is way off from the actual margin.

Now perhaps white voters were undersampled in the poll, who knows? But is it unreasonable that non-hispanic whites were 54% of the electorate in a 39% non-hispanic white state?

I do feel like there's a very strong desire by many here to downplay R gains in minority communities and promote that idea that instead, white people living in/adjacent to these communities swung wildly R.  However, essentially all available data supports Southern white people voting left of the 2004-16 elections most everywhere.  So R's had to make up the margins from somewhere!

I'm not downplaying the gains. They are absolutely massive gains. The issue is people don't understand the baseline from where the gains came from. TX 29th was Clinton +50 points !. It's now only in the upper teens for Harris.

In an odd way it's facts like this that could give Dems a tiny bit of optimism - the state has still trended pretty hard left relative to 2008/2012 *despite* R's massive gains with Hispanics and non-whites in general, and I just struggle to see Rs continuing to get 15%+ rightwards shifts amongst non-whites cycle after cycle, whereas Dem gains in suburbs should generally continue until migration patterns substantially change.

The thing though is that it was expected by 2032, the Dems would no longer need the Rust belt as Texas would become a pure tossup.

With Texas no longer on at the very least the same path, the Dems will still need the rust belt to win

Yeah the electoral map is always evolving though. GA/NC/AZ(?) may give them more leeway to be able to lose 1 or 2 of the rust belt states but in general Dems will want to stay competitive there. It also seems like the rust belt has generally held up better than some expected for Dems post-2016 so the need for Blexas feels less intense - post 2016 many genuinely believed that MI/WI/PA/MN would all just zoom super hard right and Dems would have to rely on the sunbelt to stay viable but so far that hasn’t happened yet - if 8 years of being into this stuff has taught me anything it’s don’t expect trends to be consistent or last forever, especially if it’s powered by persuasion

[MaynardFriedman]

The exit polls are wrong. Even in this cursed election, there's no way Democrats lost the Hispanic vote by 10 points - they wouldn't have been up by 10 in Bexar County in that case, Hays County would have flipped etc.

They didn't even lose the RGV by 10 - is the idea that Hispanics in rural Texas or Midland somehow matter as much as Hispanics in San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas?

[Joe McCarthy Was Right]

Trump did not beat Harris by 11% with the Texas Hispanic vote or else Trump would have won El Paso County and Bexar. Actually, he would have won everything that's either south or west of Travis County.

[Agafin]

Trump did not beat Harris by 11% with the Texas Hispanic vote or else Trump would have won El Paso County and Bexar. Actually, he would have won anything that's either south or west of Travis County.

The Fox News  Voter survey which seems to be more conservative on Trump's hispanic gains also has Trump winning Texas latinos but by a much smaller margin (+2, 50-48).

[Progressive Pessimist]

As I keep saying, it depends if a future Republican nominee can maintain this coalition or not.

I'm betting against it, personally.

Consider how long it's been-12 years-since a non-Trump candidate was nominated for the presidency. We'll be in unfamiliar territory when, or if, we're ever rid of Trump as a presence.

[CheapDollarEra?]

Imagine thinking that getting urba voters to vote D is too hard.

[Death of a Salesman]

The exit polls are wrong. Even in this cursed election, there's no way Democrats lost the Hispanic vote by 10 points - they wouldn't have been up by 10 in Bexar County in that case, Hays County would have flipped etc.

They didn't even lose the RGV by 10 - is the idea that Hispanics in rural Texas or Midland somehow matter as much as Hispanics in San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas?

There are 8 congressional districts in Texas that were majority Hispanic CVAP in 2020.
Trump won TX-15, TX-23, TX-27, TX-28, and TX-34.
Harris won TX-16, TX-20, and TX-29. For Trump to have lost Hispanic voters in Texas, he would have had to have won Anglo voters by 40+ points.

Trump didn't win Texas Latinos and definitely not by 10 points. If I had to guess Harris County Latinos are probably where Texas Latinos as a whole vote . (RGV/ and other counties vote to the right while Dallas/San Antonio are more left wing) TX 29th still voted Harris +18. It is 15% black and 8% white though. The whites would definitely be a significant portion of the total vote, maybe 2 or 3 of those are 8 are downtown swing votes but the remaining 5% in Pasadena are quite R. Blacks should be pretty heavily D though and probably net more votes for Dems than whites did for R's If I had to guess Hispanics voted D+10 in the seat so D+10 statewide? Trump still did better with TX Latinos than Bush though.

In 2016, when Clinton won TX-29 by 50, she was up by 27 with Texan Hispanics in exit polls. In the 8 years since, the seat has gotten less white, and black+anglo voters there haven't swung substantially republican, so a 30 point gain there implies a much more than 30 pt gain with hispanic voters. Were those exit polls also wrong? Has every Texas exit poll for the past decade dramatically underestimated racial polarization? Or is it possible that an urban seat is to the left of the state as a whole?