Is A Blue Texas Coming?

In a recent journal article, Professor Seth McKee, Oklahoma State University, assesses party identification (PID) in the South. He covers all of the states of the confederacy both in terms of PID and voting behavior. He uses data that allow him to analyze PID from 1992 to 2020 and voting behavior from 2008 to 2020.

He first defines PID and its importance in political science and indicates how it will be conceptualized in his study. He follows the common practice of considering Independents who lean to one of the major political parties (Democratic Party or Republican Party) as partisans. I have previously posted on my problem with that conceptualization; so I won’t consider it in this post.

His findings lead to the following conclusion:

. . . The principal findings in this study reiterate Republican dominance in contemporary southern politics. In the last several presidential elections, the white electorate has increased their GOP ID, and especially rural white voters who continue realigning to the Republican Party. Black and Hispanic voters have also tilted toward the GOP, albeit modestly to the point of inconsequential in the case of African Americans, but more notably so among Latinos, and particularly those living in Florida and Texas. Finally, white voters are more participatory than their Black and Hispanic neighbors, to the point that their turnout more than offsets their declining share of the southern electorate.

This current state of affairs appears to paint a grim picture of southern Democratic prospects, but most likely not. For instance, the South’s impressive population change and population growth via urbanization (Bullock et al. 2019), migration (Morris 2021), and generational turnover (McKee 2019), all fosters [sic] Democratic affiliation. Also, the increase in college-educated voters, and declines in white Protestantism and white rural voters (Hood and McKee 2022b), favors Democratic allegiance. To be sure, these developments can be painfully slow in transforming the political status quo (as was true for southern Republicans from the 1950s to 1980s), but it has already happened in Virginia, and now Georgia seems to be following in the Old Dominion’s footsteps (Bullock 2022c).

Lastly, two more immediate short-term conditions augur favorably for Democrats’ electoral fortunes and nurturing Democratic affiliation. First, the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Alabama case of Allen v. Milligan (2023) upheld enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (for now). This means the Yellowhammer State will redraw its congressional boundaries so that a second district (out of seven total) allows Black voters the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice (a Democratic candidate should prevail). This decision may cause a ripple effect, increasing Democratic representation in multiple southern states that currently dilute minority representation by packing these voters into as few districts as possible (Edsall 2023).

Although McKee offers no timeline for the realignment of Texas or any other Southern State, he does not see it happening in this decade. My view is much different, at least for Texas. I see the 2024 election as a realigning election.

If the Republican Party’s primary elections and caucuses go as predicted, the Republican presidential nominee will be Donald Trump. There is no doubt that Ted Cruz will secure the Texas Republican Party’s nomination for US Senator. At the top of the ballot in Texas will be Donald Trump and Ted Cruz; I cannot imagine two more polarizing candidates.

What must Texas Democrats do to carry these two offices and convince voters to vote for Democratic Party candidates in all contested elections in 2024? Civic engagement, of which voting is one component, requires the head, the heart, and the hands. The diagram below demonstrates the process:

Source: Bernie Ronan, “The Civic Spectrum: How Students Become Engaged Citizens,” The Civic Spectrum: How Students Become Engaged Citizens | Kettering Foundation

Let’s start with the head. What needs to be done? First, the targets that you want to mobilize to vote need to know about the election. Myriad pieces of information need to be accessible so that the person knows how to check their voter registration, what’s on the ballot, dates of voting, voting locations, hours of voting, etc.

There are many ways to contact individuals that you want to mobilize, but some are more effective in actually producing a person who shares your views on the election and makes it to the polls.

First, you need to identify registered voters who are likely to share your views concerning politics. In Texas, a registered voter’s record of voting (not for whom they voted) is a public record. The election officer in the county has this information, which can be procured. You can search for people in your neighborhood who have participated in recent elections, whether they voted in a political party’s primary election, which primary election they participated in, and whether they voted during the Early Voting period or on Election Day. With this information, you can develop a strategic plan to connect with those people that you discern are more likely to share your values and political views.

Second, you need to decide how you are going to connect with the people that you’ve identified. Consider how you can meet in face-to-face contact as that has proven to be the most effective method of obtaining civic engagement. Recently, some groups have made claims of a 20 percent increase in voter turnout through social relational organizing methods, where many people create a group and attempt to increase voter turnout by contacting their family, friends, and acquaintances through texts. Although voter turnout can be increased through this method, few academic studies employ a methodologically sound field experiment. For the results to be valid, one must have an experimental group and a control group. There is only one study, to my knowledge, that uses an experimental group and a control group to measure the increase in voter turnout using social media. The results from this study were a 10 percent increase in the experimental group over the control group, which received no social media contacts to increase voter turnout. The more effective method used shame rather than a positive message to increase voter turnout (Haenschen, 2016, 2019, 2023).

The heart is fed through connections to the community. You must feel good about the community, which leads to affiliation with groups, political and nonpolitical. This affiliation nurtures affiliations with other groups and individuals. The final stage is concord, which is defined as a feeling of harmony and agreement. This leads to participation, whether political or nonpolitical. We will consider voting in the next post.

Sources:

              Haenschen, K. (2023) “The Conditional Effects of Microtargeted Facebook Advertisements on Voter Turnout,” Political Behavior, 45 :1661–1681

              Haenschen, K. (2016). “Social pressure on social media: Using Facebook status updates to increase voter turnout.” Journal of Communication, 66(4), 542–563.

Haenschen, K., & Jennings, J. (2019). “Mobilizing millennial voters with targeted internet advertisements: A field experiment.” Political Communication, 36(3), 357–375.

McKee, S. (2023). “Party Affiliation in the Southern Electorate,” Political Research Quarterly, Forthcoming.