Texas Politics & Government: Ideas and Institutions

Day 8 of the Texas primaries continued a trend started on the second day. Democrats are more engaged than Republicans. On Day 8, the number of Democrats voting increased by 82,714 over the previous day. The gap between the turnout for the parties increased dramatically, going from10,742 to 44,157. The spike in 2018 Democratic turnout reflects the increase. Will the trend continue? Will the increased turnout in the Democratic Party primary yield an increase in Democratic turnout in the general election in November? Are the counties in the SOS counties a significant percentage of Texas' registered voters? And if so, are the counties mostly urban counties that tend to support Democratic candidates anyway? I can only answer some of those questions: The SOS counties constitute 65 percent of the registered voters in the state, which means that Texas' 239 other counties contain only 35 percent of the state's registered voters. Indeed, some of the counties are supportive of Democ...

Derek Ryan, a campaign consultant in Austin, provides analyses of voter turnout in reports on his Web site. In a recent report , he provides information on who voted in the Republican and Democratic Primaries through day four of early voting. In my opinion, there are two salient facts: (1) The Republican primary voters are overwhelmingly voters who have voted in previous Republican primaries and no Democratic primaries. On the other hand, almost one in five Democratic voters have no primary voting record but have voted in a general election previously; (2) The enthusiasm seems to be on the Democratic Party's side. Of course, Democrats have more contested elections and that increases voter turnout. So far, Democratic voters are nearly participating at the rate that they participated in the 2016 presidential primary. Here's who has voted in the primaries: Republicans and then Democrats.

The University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll shows little change in party identification among Texas registered voters one month before the March 6th primary elections. The PID has remained about the same since 2014. However, Republicans continue to win most elections, even though PID is reasonably equal between Democrats and Republicans.

Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes write in The Atlantic magazine: So we arrive at a syllogism: (1) The GOP has become the party of Trumpism. (2) Trumpism is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law. (3) The Republican Party is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law. A syllogism is, according to dictionary.com: 1. Logic. an argument the conclusion of which is supported by two premises, of which one (major premise) contains the term (major term) that is the predicate of the conclusion, and the other (minor premise) contains the term (minor term) that is the subject of the conclusion; common to both premises is a term (middle term) that is excluded from the conclusion. A typical form is “All A is C; all B is A; therefore, all B is C.”. 2. deductive reasoning. 3. an extremely subtle, sophisticated, or deceptive argument. Which definition applies here?   First, has the GOP become the party of Trump? Has he taken control of the party appa...

Last night, Peck Young, Director of ACC's Center for Public Policy and Political Studies, Harriett Harrow, member of Austin's Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, and I participated in a game night at Capital Factory in the downtown Omni Hotel. Peck spoke about the creation of the commission; Harriett provided a personal interest perspective on the commission, and I spoke about the commission's criteria for redistricting. My thanks to the League of Women Voters of the Austin Area and Glasshouse Policy for the event. My prepared remarks follow: Gerrymandering is political. Politics is the authoritative allocation of values for a society, according to David Easton. The Gerrymandering Project at fivethirtyeight.com demonstrates how district boundaries can be manipulated to accomplish a particular objective: (1) favor Republicans, (2) favor Democrats, (3) match partisanship and seats, (4) promote competition, (5) maximize majority-minority districts, (6) compac...