Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Analyzing the 2020 Texas Election (Part Deux)

In the presidential contest in 2020, Texas was considered a swing state. According to 270 to win (https://www.270towin.com/2020-polls-biden-trump/), the average of six polls conducted through November 2, 2020 showed Trump with a slim 1.3 percent advantage:



Many analyses placed blame on poor polling, Trump supporters misleading pollsters, and other reasons that deemed Texas’ division between Democrats and Republicans closer than it actually was. The final results show Trump winning Texas with 52.2 percent of the vote to Biden’s 46.4 percent. The 5.8 percent difference showed that Texas was indeed competitive. What differences in the campaign would have resulted in a Biden win in Texas?

The most common analysis maintains that Texas nothing would have helped because Texas remains a “Red State” with a majority of voters preferring the policies and programs supported by the Republican Party of Texas and its candidates. Others have noted that Texas is divided among the Democratic urban core of Texas, the rural Republican strongholds, and the battleground area of suburban Texas. This is the argument of Blue Metros, Red States, which was recently published by Brookings Institution.

In Texas, the division among the three components of Texas was close enough that an expansion of votes could have resulted in a Democratic win of Texas’ 38 Electoral College votes. In the previous post, I noted that 30 percent of registered voters in Texas did not vote. That constitutes 5.7 million voters. If more of these nonvoters had been mobilized in certain counties, the results could have been different.

In the ten largest counties in number of registered voters, 3.2 million registered voters did not vote. That constitutions 56 percent of the registered voters who did not vote. In some of those counties, voter turnout was more than 70 percent of registered voters (Travis, Fort Bend, Collin, and Denton). However, Harris, Dallas, Bexar, and Hidalgo Counties were below the average turnout of 66.5 percent turnout. If those counties had achieved the average turnout and those nonvoters had been identified as potential Biden voters, Biden would have added 175,000 votes. Of course, Biden still would have been more than 400,000 votes short of the number necessary to defeat Trump. Gaining those additional votes in the urban core, but additional votes in the suburbs could also have been garnered.

 

Trump/Pence

Biden/Harris

 

 

 

County

Early Votes

Total Votes

Early Votes

Total Votes

Total Votes

Total Voters

Turnout

HARRIS

607,040

699,771

810,106

911,913

1,633,557

2,480,522

65.86%

DALLAS

262,198

306,572

527,822

597,407

917,245

1,398,469

65.59%

TARRANT

351,885

403,271

357,565

403,698

820,157

1,212,524

67.64%

BEXAR

266,145

303,871

397,338

440,823

756,039

1,189,373

63.57%

TRAVIS

140,321

159,907

403,939

432,062

602,889

854,577

70.55%

COLLIN

229,730

250,194

213,187

227,868

485,323

648,670

74.82%

DENTON

202,732

221,829

174,573

188,023

416,610

565,089

73.72%

EL PASO

64,886

81,235

143,224

168,801

254,029

488,470

52.01%

FORT BEND

143,623

157,595

180,197

195,191

356,908

482,368

73.99%

HIDALGO

75,077

89,925

110,840

127,391

219,433

391,309

56.08%

 

2,343,637

2,674,170

3,318,791

3,693,177

6,462,190

9,711,371

66.54%

EV % TV

87.64%

 

89.86%

 

 

 

 

 

In the 11th through 20th largest counties, Trump won 56.5 percent of the vote. Among these ten counties are several suburban counties in which Democrats could have won a larger share of the vote and reduced Trump’s margin of victory. There are 770,000 registered voters in these counties that did not vote. As an example, Hays and Williamson Counties, suburbs that are southwest and north of Austin, could have provided additional voters, although the number is less than 150,000 votes.

 

Trump/Pence

Biden/Harris

 

 

 

County

Early Votes

Total Votes

Early Votes

Total Votes

Total Votes

Total Voters

Turnout

WILLIAMSON

123,803

138,649

132,612

142,457

287,092

376,672

76.22%

MONTGOMERY

167,808

193,224

65,877

74,255

271,175

370,060

73.28%

GALVESTON

84,668

93,306

53,326

58,247

153,843

228,482

67.33%

BRAZORIA

80,822

89,939

56,749

61,780

154,037

224,256

68.69%

CAMERON

40,303

48,834

54,592

63,732

113,635

218,910

51.91%

BELL

53,404

67,113

47,880

56,032

125,559

215,974

58.14%

NUECES

55,697

64,467

53,921

60,749

126,984

211,652

60.00%

LUBBOCK

69,740

78,560

35,103

39,757

120,204

183,320

65.57%

HAYS

42,289

47,427

54,200

59,213

108,822

152,840

71.20%

MCLENNAN

47,719

59,432

31,185

36,550

97,617

149,461

65.31%

 

766,253

880,951

585,445

652,772

1,558,968

2,331,627

66.86%

EV % TV

86.98%

 

89.69%

 

 

 

 

 

Another source of additional votes would have been voters in heavily Hispanic counties in South Texas. Twenty counties in Texas have a population that is more than 75 percent Hispanic. Two of those counties, Bexar and Hidalgo are among the ten largest counties; therefore, I exclude them from consideration. Among the remaining eighteen counties, the average percentage of the vote for Biden was 56 percent of the vote to Trump’s 40 percent of the vote. Four years earlier, in 2016, Hillary Clinton received 69.4 percent of the vote to Trump’s 30.6 percent. Thus, Biden’s advantage was 13 percent lower than Clinton’s advantage. The appeal to Hispanic voters by Democrats was ineffective, and Texas Republicans emphasized issues that appeal to Hispanics as well as depicting Democrats as too liberal for Texas.



If Texas is to turn Blue in some future election, Democrats will need to expand their appeal to Hispanics, foster neighborhood organizations of activists that are active throughout the election year, and expand their reach into he suburbs that surround their urban cores. Is a Democratic incursion into statewide offices in 2022 possible, or is Texas destined to remain a red state in which rural voters continue to provide Republican candidates with the votes necessary to overcome the Democrats’ stronghold on the urban core and expansion into the suburbs?   

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