"Blue Texas" is Within the Realm of Possibility - and it Could End Election Week Madness
Texas, for the first time in decades, is a swing state. If it flips blue, it could put a dramatic cork in election week madness. Source.
The political dreams of Democrats across the nation may finally be coming to fruition as the race for Texas is tighter than it’s been in decades.
Traditionally, the Lone Star State has been a given for Republican candidates. But ever since the 2018 Senate race, in which the incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz narrowly defeated Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke by a margin of only 2.6% — closer than any Senate race in Texas since 1978 — the state has been hotly contested.
Now, polls show President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are neck and neck. And with 38 Electoral College votes, the state could be a game changer if Biden manages to flip it. In fact, a Washington Post op-ed, co-written by Beto O’Rourke himself, claims that if Biden wins Texas, he can put an end to the Election Night uncertainty. The idea is that without Texas and it’s Electoral College votes, Trump will have no viable path to victory. And since the state rejected efforts to expand voting by mail, it will be one of the few states with a near definite victor on November 3rd.
Still, until then, a lot of uncertainty remains.
One such area of discrepancy can be found in the state’s 1.8 million newly registered voters. Since Texas doesn’t collect party affiliation when it registers voters, there’s really no telling who they support. That said, we can see where these voters are, and most of them live in large urban or suburban counties, which tend to lean more Democratic. It’s not a perfect measure by any means, but it is somewhat of an indication.
Regardless, there’s no denying Texas has had a milestone turnout in regards to voting this year. With over 9 million ballots cast before Election Day, the state has already surpassed its entire voter turnout from 2016, joining Hawaii as the only other state to do so.
There’s also no denying that Texas has a red history. And that history can’t be ignored. Although it was the smallest margin of victory for a Republican since 1996, Trump still won the state by 9 percentage points in 2016. Even now, polls show him having a slight lead over Biden — though the amount is within the margin of error.
So the question remains: is Texas truly going blue? The truth is, it’s still too early to tell. At the very least, it’s on track to join other regular battleground states, like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, as purple going forward.
Jim Henson, co-director of the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Polls, puts it best: a win for Biden may not be “probable” but it has “gone into the realm of the plausible.”