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Texas as a swing state?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Invisible Fan, Oct 5, 2020.

  1. Air Langhi

    Air Langhi Contributing Member

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    I think killing oil industry probably killed Biden. Even if he believes it you have to lie sometimes.
     
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  2. TheRealist137

    TheRealist137 Member

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    I wouldn't count on Texas staying blue off of this election. Trump is one of the worst presidents of all-time. Put a random George Dubya Republican on the ticket and watch Texas become solid red again.
     
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  3. peleincubus

    peleincubus Member

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    That’s a good point. A faction of people like him more than a candidate is liked. But a large portion of people despise him more than a normal candidate.
     
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  4. HROZ

    HROZ Member

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    Think Texas has been gerrymandered like crazy

    If the state goes blue this election then re-districting will give Dems a much bigger shot at keeping Texas blue.

    But you're right.

    10% lead and Texas is even......
    It's a Republican leaning state still.
     
  5. TWS1986

    TWS1986 SPX '05, UH' 19

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    I doubt Texas turns blue. Hopefully in my lifetime though. But if we keep getting transplants from Cali and other blue states maybe it'll happen;)
     
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  6. Xerobull

    Xerobull You son of a b!tch! I'm in!

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    We're hip. We're cool.

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Master Baiter

    Master Baiter Contributing Member

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    The majority of people coming from Cali are not liberals. I had this false sense of relief that we were getting away from the nutty conservatives when we moved to Cali only to find out that Cali has a different kind of nutty. They aren't as religious but are quacks nonetheless and they think that Texas is this small government, conservative panacea where they give up state income tax and can cash in the equity from their expensive tiny house and put it into an expensive McMansion.
     
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  8. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    Really depends where in California. In the major cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego) its largely blue. And in most of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley areas. But there are large parts of Southern California including parts of Los Angeles (eg Orange County) that are red. And large parts of the rural areas. I lived in the Grass Valley/Nevada City area and it was deep red. Went to school at Fresno State and it was largely red in the San Joaquin Valley.
     
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  9. Nolen

    Nolen Contributing Member

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    I was wondering about this.
    https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2020

    All 150 seats of the Texas state legislature are up for grabs this election.
    I don't know how the votes for the state govt are tabulated - is it proportional, or are there winners district by district?

    If, hypothetically, Biden were to win TX, would that also mean that the dems take a majority in the state legislature, and can then erase/reverse the gerrymandered districts after 2020 census?

    (I don't think dems will win TX, just wondering.)
     
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  10. REEKO_HTOWN

    REEKO_HTOWN I'm Rich Biiiiaaatch!

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    Oil is dead here. Roughnecks have known this for the last 3 years. Haven't you seen the prices at the pump?
     
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  11. Astrosfan183

    Astrosfan183 Member

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    As someone who watches polls and analysis at an unhealthy level, and with a bunch of new polls dropping today, here's some analysis on this race. Yesterday I posted some thoughts in the Texas Senate Election thread, and predicted a roughly 45% chance that Texas goes for Biden. Today I'd put that down to 40%. I'm pretty bullish on Texas going blue here, for comparison the 538 Election Model has it at a 32% and the Economist model has it at 31%. My methodology is significantly less scientific, as in it's not scientific at all, but anyways, here's some points.
    In favor of Blue Texas
    -The obvious thing is turnout. It's looking like possibly the highest turnout in Texas we've seen in a long time, if not ever. It's clear a lot of people are fired up to vote in this election. Higher turnout typically favors Democrats. That being said, Texas could be weird because it's Texas, but we've already seen Republicans attempting to lower this number with the Abbott call on lowering dropboxes to 1 and the state GOP suing to throw out all the Drive-through voting votes that happened in Houston (lawsuit failed). Historic trends tend to show us more votes are generally good for Democrats.
    -Not a ton of Demographics information out there but what is out there is good for Democrats. Texas does not have party registration like some states so we can't look at that, and even if we did, there's a lot of evidence that Texas can have split ballot voters more than other places (see 2018: where Ted Cruz won by only 2 points, but Greg Abbott won by 13). But anyways, eAlder black voter totals have already passed 2016, and the youth turnout looks very large. Both those Demographics highly favor Biden.
    -District level polls have not looked good for the GOP. In fact, lots of suburban districts have had 10-20 point swings for Biden. This is happening across the country. Caveat though- a lot of district level polls tend to be internals, which obviously can have a bias, and most of these have come from Democrats. BUT, Republicans take internals too and as far as I have seen have not been releasing them like I've seen Democrats, and if they showed good things, there'd be no reason not to.
    -Turnout is also up in a lot of those suburban counties. Hays County, where San Marcos is, just crossed its 2016 vote total. It's one of those districts likely to flip from R to D.
    -If suburbs reallly do flip with 10-20 point swings, then that absolutely has to be made up elsewhere. That means making some inroads in the big city districts or turning out new voters in rural red districts. The latter seems more likely than the former, but those districts do not have the potential voters the bigger ones do.
    -Polls in Texas consistently tend to underestimate Dem turnout, at least lately, and a lot of that is because they underpoll Hispanic voters. Which leads me into some direct analysis of a specific poll- the NYT/Sienna Poll today
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/upshot/poll-texas-hispanics-trump.html

    This article gives a lot of great insight, and I like the NYT polls a ton because of that. They are also an A+ rated pollster on 538. They mention in here how they tend to underestimate the Hispanic vote and did in 2018. A look at that race- Their final poll had Cruz up on Beto 51 to 43. The final margin was 50.9 to 48.3. A similar polling error would put Biden winning in Texas, and there's even more room in this race than Beto/Cruz with more undecideds. We see similar polling errors in models too. Apply how off 538 was on the final call for Beto vs Cruz in 2018 to what they are currently calling for Biden vs Trump in 2020 and it shows Biden with a slight lead.

    That does not mean that Biden is in the lead, not at all. In fact the poll shows the opposite, which is why I put his chances below 50%. But rather, I'm pointing out how we are 110% in the potential margin of error. Clearly Biden polls show that too with them ramping up their Texas push in the last week. Personally, I really, really wish they'd try to make a big ad push in the Rio Grande Valley, it's usually a Dem weak spot that I don't think needs to be, but running up the score in the big cities and focusing a lot on El Paso, whose currently facing one of the worst virus outbreaks in the country (while the president's chief of staff admitted a few days ago they've given up on trying to contain the virus), isn't a horrible strategy. I think there's a lot of bang for your buck though with an ad blitz down south, but I don't work for a campaign.

    Anyways, I firmly have Texas as a toss-up with a Republican leaning. I think it will be very close, within 2 points either way, but polls have shown anywhere from Trump +5 to Biden +3, and that margin obviously benefits Trump. I'd be VERY surprised if we saw a polling error in the other direction, where Trump wins by more than 5, I think that would have had to assume a lower turnout, but anything could happen. Another strike against Biden is that the senate candidate, MJ Hegar, is pretty consistently trailing 2 to 8 points behind Biden, indicating either she's not running a great campaign or a lot of people like Cornyn (I'm point to the former, personally). I'd feel more confident if there was a strong Senate candidate lifting things up, but again, split ticket votes definitely happen in Texas. Also, grassroots game has still been very strong in Texas- the PAC Beto O'Rourke started to flip the Texas house has raised a lot of money, done a lot of good work, and put in tons of volunteer efforts. I haven't seen a push on the state level for Democratic candidates like that yet, and it could make a difference in this race compared to past ones.
     
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  12. geeimsobored

    geeimsobored Contributing Member

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    If 2018 is any indication, the Sienna polls in October 2018 consistently understated support for Democrats. They were consistently off on all of the Texas polls in 2018 and frankly it hurt Democrats because the DCCC and outside groups didn't invest in Texas outside of Fletcher, and Allred's races because of these polls. Funding for Ortiz Jones and Hegar basically dried up once these polls came out. Looking at 2018, here's what NYT/Sienna found versus what actually happened. The shift in TX-23 is especially notable because that is the district that covers the RGV and suburban San Antonio and the new poll that came out indicates that Biden isn't winning Texas because he's underperforming among Hispanics and African Americans.

    TX Senate
    NYT/Sienna: R+9
    Final Result: R+2.6

    TX-32

    NYT/Sienna: D+4
    Final Result: D+6.5

    TX-7
    NYT/Sienna: R+1
    Final Result: D+5

    TX-23
    NYT/Sienna: R+15
    Final Result: R+0.5

    TX-31
    NYT/Sienna: R+15
    Final Result: R+2.9
     
    #92 geeimsobored, Oct 26, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2020
  13. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    ^Texas is such a big state. It's pathetic there isn't more Dem investment, considering the amount of crazy ******* politicians that arise from there and assume they're safe to destroy whatever they want.
     
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  14. Astrosfan183

    Astrosfan183 Member

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    I didn't go as deep as looking at these polls, I appreciate that a ton. They clearly have a polling error when it comes to Texas, I would guess it's underpolling Hispanic voters, that they should be adjusting for.
     
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  15. geeimsobored

    geeimsobored Contributing Member

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    Pollsters in general have a problem polling Hispanic voters. Nevada is probably the most classic example (NYT/Sienna got this one wrong in 2018 as well, they had Heller winning). Dems always outperform polls there because no one can figure out how to poll Hispanics there.

    Also NYT/Sienna are awful at pushing undecideds. It's the weak before the election and they're showing double digit undecided voters.
     
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  16. TWS1986

    TWS1986 SPX '05, UH' 19

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    Damn. Here I was getting my hopes up!
     
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  17. HROZ

    HROZ Member

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    It's districts.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_House_of_Representatives

    With Abbott to stay & Republicans to control the state senate.
    The house is the only way for Dems to get a say in re districting.
     
    Nolen likes this.
  18. geeimsobored

    geeimsobored Contributing Member

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    Actually the Texas House is an example of gerrymandering failing spectacularly. Beto won a majority of Texas state house districts despite losing the overall statewide vote. If Biden performs as well in the suburbs as the NYT/Sienna poll projects, Democrats will win the state house, period. When Republicans drew the district lines in 2010, they were built around Republican dominance of the suburbs but Democrats are performing so well in the suburbs that they'll end up winning a majority of state house districts even if they lose the statewide vote.

    Consequently, Biden doesn't have to win the state to create an environment where Democrats win the state house. He only needs to get close like Beto did. Unlike 2018, Democratic state house candidates are actually fundraising quite well and have a fair amount of national support so I'm becoming more confident that the Democrats could win the house. The State Senate is gerrymandered in such a way to where the Democrats simply can't win there but the State House is actually now drawn in a way that benefits Democrats so its quite possible that they take control.

    If you want a sign of how confident Democrats are, we've had two Democrats already step forward to run for Speaker of the Texas House. They're already jockeying for leadership roles in the House.
     
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  19. Nolen

    Nolen Contributing Member

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    Wow!
    I didn't know there was a state House and a state Senate.
    If dems did control the house, can they correct the gerrymandered districts for the state Senate?
     
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  20. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    I'm disappointed they didn't spend more time and resources on turning out Hispanics. But I also get it that the Biden campaign needs to ensure they protect their turf and not over reach too much.
     
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