We got unexpected news yesterday that the Clinton campaign
was going up on the air in Texas. This comes as three polls show Clinton within
striking distance in the state.
The odds still overwhelmingly favor Trump in Texas and the
amount of money the Clinton campaign is putting in does not suggest that the
campaign is taking the state all that seriously. But the math for a Clinton win
is not quite as forbidding as people might think.
What’s striking is how little the nonwhite vote needs to
move to make the contest competitive. To analyze the demographic trends, we
unfortunately don’t have a Texas exit poll from 2012. We are left only with the
data from 2008. That year, McCain got a solid, if not spectacular, 25% of the
nonwhite vote which made up 37% of the electorate. Trump seems unlikely to
duplicate that performance, and that is where his trouble starts.
This year, the nonwhite portion of the electorate is likely
to be around 40%. Combine that with white Democrats, who make up about 10% of
the electorate, and that means that 50% of the voters come from Democratic base
groups. More Democratic voting Hispanics mean Clinton is likely to get 80% of
that half of the electorate, compared to Obama’s 75% in 2008. This gives her
40% of the vote right out of the gate.
Trump will bounce back, however, as the remaining white voters
voted nearly 85% for McCain and he won by about 11%. Obama’s 75% with his 50%
is not as good as McCain’s 85% with his 50%. Clinton is likely to do a bit
better by taking 10% of the type of whites who voted for McCain, putting her at
45% of the vote (which is not that far from her average of the three recent
polls). Clinton could win with that percentage if 10% votes for third party
candidates. That is a lot of votes for a third party but it is not an
impossibly high number.
Trump has two somewhat connected problems in Texas. The
first is that most Texans did not necessarily buy what he was selling in the
primary. Trump got only 26.7% of the vote in the Texas primary, one of his
worst showings in the country. This poor performance was likely due to the
presence of native son Ted Cruz. Yet their ugly battle likely had spill-over effect.
Although Cruz technically may have waived the white flag of surrender, there is
little doubt the bad blood is still very bad.
The other problem for
Trump in Texas is that due to massive gerrymandering almost all Texas
Republicans are likely to win no matter what the turnout in their districts is.
In addition, there’s no U.S. Senate race. So Texas Republicans have little
incentive to work hard. Staying home has no real downside for the voter and no
real downside for the party, except a Trump loss and they don’t particularly
like Trump. If anything, a Trump loss in Texas could be psychically satisfying
for the Texas establishment and, ironically, could bring additional resources
to the state party should it now be in play. It doesn’t help Trump that Jeb
Bush’s son is in charge of making sure Trump wins in Texas and George P. may
not be particularly eager for that to happen.
Even if the Trump campaign senses the danger, it does not
have the resources or the ability to get into the state and do much. They are
already out-organized and put-funded.
Republicans traditionally count on about one in four nonwhite
voters or better and they are simply not going to get that this year. They
still will probably be able to carry the state, but if the race lands at about
9% nationally, Texas could fall.
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