Unlike the situations in other states, Why Wendy Davis lost is an easy one to understand.
Her campaign's biggest mistake was trying to win the election based on getting the most votes from the same group of people who always turn out and vote in Texas.
That group is solidly Republican, and has been ever since the conservative leadership of the state switched parties when the parties traded ideologies.
That means the positions Wendy staked out, like women's reproductive rights, immediately lost Wendy their vote for the most part. It was with glee that they greeted her announcement to run by naming her abortion barbie.
The balance of the crowd that regularly turns out for all Texas elections White Urban Liberals and the minority communities are at max 42-43%.
Obviously winning every single one of those votes would still not be enough to win a statewide election.
So from the get go, for Davis to have any hope of winning, she'd have to find votes elsewhere.
One would think therefore, that the biggest effort of her campaign should have been a well orchestrated, new voter registration drive.
Now I don't say this is easy.
It's extremely hard, but for a Democrat to win in Texas, there is no other option.
Yet for some reason, no special focus was placed on bringing in new voters to balance the very conservative regular voters that decide every election.
The fear of such an effort was one big reason why the Republicans passed the cumbersome register to vote requirements.
They knew if someone can get those people to register and vote, then Democrats have a fair chance to win a statewide election.
Texas regularly ranks at or near the bottom in voter turn out. That means a serious voter registration drive holds potential as long as it's done right, but the Davis campaign seemed oblivious to this.
Neither I nor my neighbor saw any such effort. I mention her, because she was until recently very connected in the Black community here through the office she held and her decades as a national officer in her church the African Methodist.
She definitely would know about such an effort. All I heard from her was how disappointed she was that not only was their no focused drive to register the new voters needed in order to win.
That along with the fact that the campaign seemed to be using a strategy more appropriate for states like Illinois or New York, states where one huge metropolitan area dominates the rest of the state really upset her.
She really wanted Davis to win, but see it happening with the strategy they adopted.
That sort of strategy won't translate well to Texas as it has 3 hefty metros and a handful of cities like Austin and El Paso. So many large diverse metros ranging from very conservative to Moderately Liberal defeated the purpose of a strategy that makes winning the result of winning the one big city.
Even worse that strategy resulted in the rest of the state being virtually ignored.
Not until the last days of the election did the Davis campaign put troops on the ground in the Killeen Temple metro where we are, with about a population of 230,000 total it is typical of the numerous places in this state with a population of 100,000-400,000.
All of which seemed to be below the threshold for attention by the Davis campaign.
It seemed from where I was that most of the effort the Davis campaign expended was focused on the areas where her support was strongest, and most resistant to Republican efforts to win their vote.
That diverse group consisting of White Liberals and Minorities like the extreme right wing group wasn't going anywhere, and all the attention they received cost the campaign the ability to focus on areas where turn out is traditionally weakest, but the electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic.
By only focusing mostly on the biggest cities, The Rio Grand Valley probably the richest place to farm for new voters was given short shrift.
It's heavily populated, but El Paso was the only city that received much focus.
All in all the effort doesn't bode well for ever turning Texas blue or purple.
To do that will require a years long effort to reach the people who never vote in the areas that were mostly overlooked by the Davis campaign via a years long new voter registration effort.
The irony is Texas enacted those burdensome voter registration requirements in anticipation of such an effort one day perhaps starting with Davis campaign.