by Harry Enten, CNN
August 8, 2019
Texas politics are in the spotlight again this week. A number of House Republicans from the state have announced their retirements, and, after a mass shooting in El Paso this past weekend, Beto O'Rourke tussled with President Donald Trump over differing responses to the shootings.
In the backdrop of these developments is a Texas electorate that seems to be divided much more than it used to be.
It's a state with a voter base that seems to rapidly be shifting toward the center -- and I believe it could go Democratic in next year's presidential election for the first time since 1976.
I was once a skeptic on Texas turning blue, but I've changed my tune because Trump is a uniquely unpopular Republican in Texas who seems to be the driver of an important development: Like other Americans, Texans with a college degree are shifting rapidly from red to blue, and Democrats have a lot of room to grow with them in Texas.
This doesn't mean the state will go Democratic in 2020 (Democrats not named Joe Biden currently are losing to Trump in the Lone Star state in high quality polling), but it is a real possibility.
Trump's net approval rating (approval - disapproval) among registered voters has been slightly negative in Texas throughout his presidency. The latest Quinnipiac University poll put it at -1 points. All other elected Texas Republican officials had at least a +8 point net approval rating. This poll comes on top of the 2018 exit poll giving Trump a +1 net approval rating, and the midterm electorate in Texas is likely more Republican leaning than a 2020 presidential electorate will be. Trump won the state by 9 in 2016.
If the 2020 election were held today and it were solely a referendum on Trump, Texas would be a toss-up.
Traditionally, Texas has been a lot more Republican than the nation as a whole. In 2014, for example, Democratic President Barack Obama's net approval rating was 18 points worse in Texas than nationally. In 2018, Trump, a Republican, was just 10 points higher in Texas. In other words, there was an 8-point shift toward the Democrats, on this measure, compared to the nation as a whole in just four years. This followed the 2016 presidential race being the closest in the state since the 1990s.
Trump's unusually low approval rating in 2018 created the environment in which Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won re-election by less than 3 points. It was the worst Republican performance in a Senate race in the state since 1988. In 2012, Cruz won his first term by 16 points. This 13 point pro-Democratic shift occurred even though Cruz was an incumbent (who usually do better) and the national environment (as measured by the presidential vote in 2012 and House vote in 2018) shifted by less than 5 points toward the Democrats. (As I've pointed out, this shift was driven mostly by opinions toward Trump, not towards the Texas Senate candidates running in 2018.)
Of course, just because the state became more blue doesn't mean it will keep moving blue into 2020. The reason I think it could shift more is because of why the state has been going blue over the last few years: the aforementioned highly-educated voters.
High-quality consistent public polling data of Texas isn't easy to find. And while county-by-county returns are not a perfect way of examining the issue, they are a powerful tool and are sending a very strong signal. Take a look at what occurred between the 2012 and 2018 Texas Senate races.
Traditionally, the thought was growing diversity (i.e. Hispanics becoming a bigger part of the electorate) would largely be responsible for turning Texas blue. That, though, could take years for Democrats and could be counteracted by whites becoming more Republican.
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