A Democratic victory in Texas could upend Republicans' electoral map for a decade or more, and yet that's exactly the precipice the GOP is facing. Two political prognosticators changed their ratings of the Lone Star State Wednesday from Lean/Tilt Republican to Tossup—Cook Political Report and Inside Elections.
Texas, with its 38 electoral votes, is by far the biggest prize on the GOP map, and every Republican presidential candidate for decades has built their path to 270 with the foregone conclusion that Texas is going red. The last Democrat to win the state was Jimmy Carter back in 1976.
Texas can flip blue this year, with sky-high early turnout in key counties. Not only would it build a Biden landslide, we can flip a U.S. Senate seat and win back the state House. Turnout2020 is making calls to Texas voters on Wednesday, Thursday, and up to Election Day. Sign up for a shift to help Texans vote early, and sign up for phonebank training if this is your first time.
Many Democrats in the state had been eyeing 2024 as the year when that might all change, but change may have come to the mammoth state sooner based on an influx of new, younger residents who have entirely shifted the state's demographics.
In many ways, the rating changes are a reflection of the fact that there're simply too many fluid factors for election analysts to get a handle on where the state might land. In no small part, that's due to the state's epic turnout so far, with nearly 8.5 million residents having already cast their ballot—representing roughly 94% of all the 8.97 million votes counted in 2016. And early voters are still lining up!
Honestly, with that kind of turnout, who could possibly know what the outcome will be? Which is basically what Cook Political's Amy Walter wrote about the ratings change. The huge surge in early voting and record turnout, she wrote, "adds a level of uncertainty to the equation."
Former El Paso Congressman and Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, who’s been door-knocking with the Texas Organizing Project, says the insane turnout levels are a complete 180 from just two years ago when he fell a few points shy of defeating GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. “Check this out. Texas, on the eve of the 2018 election, was 50th in voter turnout. We were dead last,” O’Rourke told KTSA News. ”Right now, we are number 1 in the country in early voter turnout.”
But the demographic shifts are also stunning. The Washington Post writes: "In the four years since the last presidential election, at least 2 million people have moved to Texas, many of them Democrats from places like California, Florida, New York and Illinois. An estimated 800,000 young Latino Americans have turned 18, and a wave of immigrants became naturalized citizens. More than 3 million Texans have newly registered to vote." Overall, the state has netted 1.8 million more voters since 2016.
On top of that, Joe Biden is running just a few points behind Donald Trump in The New York Times polling aggregate, and polls appear to be tightening in the final days of the campaign.
Some of the uptick in voting is due to Democratic election officials in certain parts of the state simply making it easier for residents to vote. In Harris County, which includes Houston, election officials have tripled the number of early voting sites through major investments in infrastructure. "In 2016, under Republican leadership, Harris County spent about $4 million to administer the elections. After Democrats took control of every countywide office, officials increased the election budget to a staggering $31 million this year," writes NBC News. During the final days of early voting, NBC reports that some polling stations in the country will even be open 24 hours. Imagine that—making voting easier for residents rather than harder.
And while sky-high turnout in urban centers and the surrounding suburban areas alone could be enough to cinch the deal for Democrats, wooing Latino voters in the southern border regions of the state could also hold the key.
That's where vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris' trip to Texas on Friday could make a difference. Harris is planning three stops, one each in Fort Worth, Houston, and McAllen. But it was her visit to McAllen, a border town in the state's Rio Grande Valley, that turned heads, in part because it's not nearly as densely populated as a Forth Worth or a Houston, which both rank among the top five largest cities in Texas.
"You've got to really think there's a lot of slack--and upside--along the Rio Grande to send your VP candidate to one of the smaller media markets of your 400th electoral vote just days before the election," tweeted the Times' Nate Cohn, who covers elections, polling, and demographics.
And Democrats do stand to gain a lot if they have a good night in Texas, including a decisive presidential win, a U.S. Senate seat that could greatly boost Democratic chances of enacting progressive reforms under a Biden administration, 10 congressional seats targeted by House Democrats, and the nine seats needed to flip control of the state House and give Texas Democrats an active role in redrawing legislative districts for the next decade.
That's one whopper of an upside.