It’s official: Texas is a purple state. Can it turn blue?
Halloween delivered 2020’s final October Surprise: Texas is officially a toss-up state. After Cook Political Report declared Texas a toss-up state less than a week before Election Day, news quickly spread across the internet, as 2020’s final polls leave Biden within the margin of error in Texas.
According to the 40,000 election simulations run by FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s chances of winning Texas are three times as high as Trump’s odds of breaking 270 Electoral Votes — Biden wins Texas in 38% of all scenarios, but Trump wins the Electoral College only 10% of the time.
The last Democrat to win Texas’ electoral votes was Jimmy Carter in 1976. The tightening in Texas polling may come as a surprise to some, but the Texas electorate is younger, more diverse, and more tired of Trump than ever before.
As of November 2, more than 97 million votes have already been cast in the 2020 Election. That’s twice as many early votes and 68% of the total vote from the 2016 race.
The 2020 election is on track to have the highest eligible voter turnout rate since 1908, and the Lone Star State is leading the charge. Texans have already cast nearly one million more ballots than all of 2016, totaling almost 10 million votes as of Friday, October 30th.
This increased engagement comes off the momentum of the record-breaking 2018 Midterms, when the country saw its greatest midterm turnout since 1914. This year, 63% of voters say they are more enthusiastic than usual to vote. So how does a high turnout rate affect Biden’s chances?
Take a look at the presidential elections of the last fifty years. In the five races with the highest voter turnout (2008, 2016, 2004, 2012, and 1992), the popular vote went to the Democrat candidate every time.
In Texas, higher turnout means greater margins for Democrat candidates. The performance of Democrat candidates in Texas fluctuates with the national turnout rate. Thus, in a year with greater enthusiasm and potentially record-breaking turnout, Biden is likely to make greater gains in Texas.
Two years ago, 46.3% of eligible Texan voters turned out for the 2018 midterms, jumping 18% from previous midterms. As a result, Democrats flipped 12 seats in the Texas House from Republicans and picked up two previously held Republican seats in Congress. The Texas Senate race was one to watch across the country, and people nationwide witnessed the famously red Texas become more purple than ever. It was the closest a Democrat candidate came to winning a Senate seat in Texas in thirty years, as Beto O’Rourke trailed Republican incumbent Ted Cruz by only 220,000 votes.
Although under the radar until 2018, the Blue Wave in Texas has been building for years. Despite the appearance of solid red territory, Texas has become increasingly purple in recent years. Donald Trump won Texas by 9 points in 2016, the smallest margin of victory for a Republican since 1996. Four years prior, Romney beat Obama in Texas by 16 points.
Even on a local level, the red versus blue gap in Texas has narrowed. Take Collin County for example. A suburban area outside of Dallas, Collin County voted for Romney by 31 points. In 2016, it went to Trump by 17 points. In 2018, Cruz won by only 6 points. This year, it has been deemed a battleground race and one of ten “bellwether” counties by David Wasserman, editor for the Cook Political Report. Collin County has become increasingly diverse and suburban, and on top of that, residents displayed the highest early voter turnout statewide, with 65% of registered voters in the county casting a ballot before Election Day.
This purple momentum led to a surge of 1.8 million new registered Texan voters in the past four years. While Texas does not collect party affiliation of its voters, we do know where the new voters are located. Texas’ big democratic cities have seen an 11.9% increase in voter registration since 2016, while solid red territory has only increased by 9.7%. Areas where Clinton beat Trump by more than 20 points in 2016 have registered 630,000 more voters. Nationwide, according to the available early voter data, more first-time or infrequent Democratic voters are turning out than registered Republicans.
So what do Texans think of Joe Biden? One question has always been a tried and true indicator for whether there will be a victory for the incumbent: Americans, are you better off now than you were four years ago? The number of Registered Texan Republicans who believe that the country is “on the right track” dropped by 11 points in the past year alone.
The electorate in Texas mirrors the country’s shifting demography. It is predicted that Hispanic Americans will become the majority in Texas as soon as 2022, and Joe Biden holds a 34 point lead over Trump among Hispanic registered voters. Suburban voters are not the only demographic shifting away from Trump; men, women, independents, and people over 65 all report less support for Trump in 2020. Biden has a 19 point lead over Trump among people under 35. He also leads by more than 20 points among voters 65 and older.
If Biden pulls off the win in Texas, it is almost impossible for Trump to break 270. The very fact that Texas is deemed competitive indicates shifting tides in a state once seen as a red stronghold. Texas is becoming increasingly diverse and populated, two factors that tend to indicate Democratic territory. Biden beats Trump among young, old, non-white, LGBTQ+, and women voters, and while Trump takes the lead in white and non-college-educated voters, his once strong margin has narrowed. Biden has a 38% chance of winning Texas’ 38 Electoral Votes, and while that number may seem small, don’t forget that it is higher than Trump’s overall chances in 2016.
Shannon Rose Miekka is a Politics student at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and a contributing author for the independent student newspaper The Tower.
