Florida feels like the big state to watch right now. Assuming there are no massive upheavals in the electoral map, FL will be a must-win for Trump. Without it, he needs to take PA plus one “blue wall” state (assuming OH is still safely red), and his campaign has basically ceded MI to Biden.
538’s polling average for Texas, which accounts for pollster quality and house effects, still has Trump up by a point and a half. That would still be amazing though. Trump won Texas by nine points in 2016.
It’s also a potential money sink for the GOP. It would be like the Democrats having to play defense in California or New York. Populous states with large cities are expensive to have to buy air time in, even if it just ends up being a few large markets and ignores places like Austin.
Yeah but not that impressive really. Think of it in terms of its shift relative to the nation. Call Biden +9 (give or take) nationwide right now. HRC was +3. So the nation has shift D +6. Texas went from Trump +9 to +1 by current polling? A shift of 8, only 2 more than the nation overall and well within polling errors. Not recalling what the Texas Congressional margin was compared to the nation in 2018?
Nice to move that direction but for now Texas isn’t D unless lots else is first.
Texas at R+1.5 would be extraordinarily impressive. It would be part of D+200 margin in the electoral college (369-169). It would be the best D performance in Texas since Carter won the state in 1976.
An R+1.5 in Texas also probably means a good four or five suburban Congressional districts switching from R to D and the State House potentially falling to the Democrats (which would give them a voice in the next round of redistricting).
It would be impressive as part of a Dem blow-out overall nationally, but would be a modest overperforming relative to recent Texas lean (looked it up and 2018 midterms had a popular vote of R +3.4) and possibly less than one might hope for given continued demographic shifts there.
The best performance by a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976 would be impressive if it does, indeed, happen. Full stop.
Comparing a presidential election years to midterm election is usually a pretty bad move. Even a midterm year with unusually high turnout like Texas in 2018. And even a slight improvement on 2018 results in the state would be a huge accomplishment.
Democrats lost house races across Texas by 27 points in the 2014 midterms and and 20 points in 2016 before cutting that to 3.4 in 2018. Continuing to improve on that would be amazingly impressive.
It was impressive when Kobe Bryant scored 50 points on January 7, 2006. It was also impressive when he scored 51 points twelve days later on January 19, 2006 despite it only being a modest improvement compared to the previously mentioned game.
I’m “impressed” if something exceeds what should be expected. If a state leaned by X relative to the national numbers in recent elections, and they more or less keep that lean, it is what I’d be expecting. Those expectations are altered by changing demographics between cycles. Call it “impressive” if you want but it is not very unexpected.
In 2016 Texas was 11 points more R than the nation, in 2018 it was about 9 to 10 more R than the nation. (You are right about the caution with midterms but the bias is usually the other way with less D turnout). Running roughly the same lean now is not so unexpected.
Demographics in Texas have been changing. This is not the same Texas population that voted for a GOP dominated by the Texas adopted Bush clan in multiple cycles.
I hope and expect that Texas can be a purple state in the not distant future, maybe a swing one, have in the past argued that it is worth investing in, but these results show a state currently still Red enough that even a national blow-out (which I won’t count on) would still have it Red. Which given those shifts is something I find slightly disappointing.
But Latino Texans have to vote, and so far, they haven’t nearly as much as might be expected, even when Trump’s racism and anti-immigrant fervor were glaringly apparent in the 2016 campaign.
True. How much of that is due to the fact that eligible Hispanic voters are young compared to all eligible voters, and will there improve as the population ages?
I doubt it explains the low turnout completely but it is something that should improve each cycle. (And is why I think LV vs RV is especially important to watch for in Texas polling.)