Will This Democratic Primary Enthusiasm Translate Into a Purple Texas? Probably Not Yet

For years, political pundits have speculated that Texas is edging from red to purple, a drumbeat that quickened this primary session with strong Democratic enthusiasm. What's difficult is how to read these tea leaves. Texas wasn't a GOP stronghold until demographic and other changes reshaped the state. The rapid influx of northerners in the 1980s and the long coattails of the Reagan presidency during that decade attracted conservative Democrats to the GOP. George W. Bush's defeat of Democratic incumbent Gov. Ann Richards in 1994, the last time Republicans and Democrats were at parity, marked the tipping point. Since then, no Democrat has won a statewide seat — and with the exception of the major cities, Texas has remained solidly Republican.Pendulums swing, but they swing slowly and over decades, cautions political pollster Mike Baselice, who says he doesn't expect parity to take place again until 2032. He points out that cross-over conservative Democrats who made the difference in the GOP's ascension amounted to 27 percent of the voting electorate in the late 1990s. Today, they make up about 9 percent. And, he says, a heavy Democratic turnout in the primaries doesn't necessarily translate to general election success. People turn out in primaries for a variety of reasons, not all of which lead to higher excitement in the general election. In short, flipping a state requires the alignment of factors beyond high turnout in intra-party contests. It requires wooing voters back while adding a reliable core of new voters. Those are tough tasks in an electoral cycle that doesn't involve a presidential election. It would require getting Hispanic voters and millennials to show up at the polls in record numbers and to vote Democratic. That is not a given, especially among Hispanics, the fastest-growing demographic in Texas, who are more likely to vote Republican than Hispanics nationwide.The political change also requires Democratic candidates to win — or at least reduce the margin of defeat — in counties that haven't voted Democratic for years. And while the Republican vote hasn't grown at the pace of the state's exploding population, Democrats will have to grow significantly to trim what has historically become a 9- to 10-percentage-point Republican advantage in statewide races.None of this is to say that Democrats aren't adding slices of blue to the Texas landscape. They are. Hispanic voters, for example, have helped turn formerly red cities into Democratic terra firma, but these gains aren't enough to lock up statewide races. The reason: The GOP remains strong in the suburbs and in rural stretches of this very large state, and the party has an edge among older white voters who turn out in stronger numbers. The bottom line is that while Beto O'Rourke, who is running for U.S. Senate, and other Democrats have garnered a lot of attention, the broad sweep of politics doesn't yet favor Texas Democrats. Purple Texas? Color us skeptical — unless of course, Texas Republicans use the upper hand to overplay their hand. Then all bets are off. What's your view?Got an opinion on this issue? Send a letter to the editor, and you just might get published.  Continue reading...