Just a week ago, the media told us that Joe Biden’s chances of winning the Democratic presidential nomination were slim to none. The media were fixated on Bernie Sanders and his primary wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. He was widely expected to be the winner on Super Tuesday. Well, it didn’t turn out that way.
Fearing that Sanders, an avowed Socialist, would win the nomination, several Democratic candidates dropped out of the race and threw their support behind Joe Biden – and he won Super Tuesday by a comfortable margin, including Texas and eight other states.
The main takeaway from Super Tuesday is that it’s now a two-man race between Biden and Sanders from here on. Sanders also won California and garnered over 100 delegates to Biden’s 48, but the former vice president still holds the lead in total delegates.
While I’m not a fan of Joe Biden, I was happy to see his resurgence on Super Tuesday. I agree with the polls which consistently show most Americans don’t want a Socialist in the White House. I sure don’t! Fortunately, I don’t think Biden or Sanders can beat Trump.
Texas Electorate Turning Blue, First Time in Generation
The Texas electorate, long controlled by Republicans, is undergoing a rapid demographic change that is making it more hospitable to Democrats. Here’s a statistic that blew me away when I read it this week. In a new statewide poll by CBS News/YouGov, 56% of “likely Democratic voters” in Texas said they prefer socialism to only 37% who prefer capitalism. This makes me sad, but we’ll see how that plays out in November!
During the Trump administration, the Democratic Party has experienced a surge of new voters — ranging from suburban voters in areas of Texas historically dominated by Republicans to a new crop of young, racially diverse voters. Things are changing in the Lone Star state.
Here are a few of the shifts happening in the state and trends to watch as Texans decide how they’ll cast their ballots in the November elections:
1. Texas’ overall population has exploded.
In the past decade, Texas has been home to many of the country’s fastest-growing cities. While population growth has slowed across the US overall, in Texas there has been a significant increase. According to the US Census Bureau, in the period from mid-2018 to mid-2019, Texas’ population grew by 367,000 — bringing the state’s total population to almost 29 million.
People are moving from other states in droves, especially from places such as California, New York, Illinois and even Florida. People are moving to Texas for the weather, plentiful jobs and certainly for the zero state income tax.
2. More younger Texans are turning out to vote.
Democrats saw some significant electoral gains in the 2018 mid-terms in Texas. The party came closer to winning a US Senate race (Ted Cruz) than it had in decades, and it flipped several congressional and statehouse seats.
During the 2018 mid-term elections, there was a huge surge in turnout in Texas, which has long had one of the lowest voter participation rates in the nation. But in the March primaries that year, Democratic turnout more than doubled compared with four years earlier.
Texas is one of the youngest states in the country based on the age of its population. Roughly 40% of citizens are under the age of 30, and more than 60% of those young people are people of color.
It’s projected that by 2022, 1 in 3 voters in Texas will be under 30. And while turnout among voters under 30 has historically been extremely low (just 8% in 2014), the number of young voters (18-29) tripled in 2018 compared with the previous midterm election.
I should point out, however, that on Super Tuesday 25% of Democratic voters were 65 or older, about twice the level it was in 2008 according to exit polls in the state. So, it’s not just young people driving the expanding voter turnout in Texas.
3. Democrats are drawing in voters from the suburbs.
Some of those electoral gains for Democrats were also aided by the support of voters in Texas who have historically supported Republicans. Suburban areas in Texas have been a haven for Republicans for years, but now are shifting.
We now have swing voters in suburban areas who are willing to cross the line and vote for Democrats instead of voting for Republicans. Several suburban counties around Austin, for example, flipped to Democrats for the first time in decades in 2018.
I could go on with examples, but the bottom line is Texas is slowly turning blue, whether I like it or not. As a conservative, I don’t like it, but it is what it is, as is the case across much of the country. I will have much more to say about this in the weeks and months ahead, but I’ll leave it there for today.
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