Beto may have lost, but he has given the once tattered Texas Democratic Party new life

A lot of things happened on election night 2018, but none more astonishing than what occurred in the State of Texas. Flipping Texas blue has long been a cliche in the political community, a joke and nothing more than a liberal pipe dream. Yet on November 6, 2018, that dream started to look a lot more like something that could come to fruition in the future, thanks to a record shattering performance from Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke. In the process, Democrats flipped two US House seats (TX-07 and TX-32) and came very close to flipping six more (TX-10, TX-21, TX-22, TX-23, TX-24, TX-31). They also picked up 12 State House seats and 2 State Senate seats, and had massive victories at the county level. So what in the world went down in the Lone Star State? And what does it portend for the state’s political future? Let’s dive right in.

The Senate Race

Of course the thing that everyone wants to talk about was at the top of the ticket. Ted Cruz defeated Beto O’Rourke to win a second term in the US Senate, though it was by a much closer margin than the polls indicated. It remains to be seen what the remaining votes will do to the final margins (a few early votes and provisional ballots to be counted) but it currently stands at 50.9% Cruz, 48.3% O’Rourke. Cruz or Beto may gain a tenth of a point or so, but I would expect this to be close to the final number: Cruz by about 2.5. That’s a gigantic event for a number of reasons. First off, it is the highest share a Democratic Senate candidate has gotten since 1988 and no Democrat for President has touched 48% in Texas since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976. No Democratic gubernatorial candidate has gotten 48% since 1990, and no Lieutenant Governor or Attorney General candidate has gotten 48% since 1994*. In the past 15 years, Texas Democrats have been defined by a 43% ceiling that I wrote about here. It’s long been the roof, the extent to the gains they can make. And many political observers expected the same for O’Rourke and a handful of polls suggested that.

Instead, the charismatic Democrat smashed that ceiling and then some, coming within 1.7% of a majority and in the process, remaking the political map in Texas. He appears to have won Tarrant County (Fort Worth), as well as Williamson County (Round Rock) and Hays County (San Marcos). For reference on how red these counties used to be, Mitt Romney won Tarrant by 16 points, Williamson by 21 points, and Hays by 11 points. That was just 6 years ago. Furthermore, O’Rourke received 45.5% in Denton County and 46.5% in Collin County, two traditionally wealthy and conservative suburban counties adjacent to Dallas. in 2012, Obama received just over 33% in these two counties. Even in the big counties, O’Rourke had gigantic margins. He got nearly 58% in Harris County (Houston), over 66% in Dallas County, over 55% in Fort Bend County (Houston suburbs), 74.3% in Travis County (Austin), and 59.5% in Bexar County (San Antonio).

County area 2012 result 2016 result 2018 result Tarrant Fort Worth 57-41 R 52-43 R 50-49 D Williamson Round Rock 59-38 R 51-41 R 51-48 D Hays San Marcos 54-43 R 47-46 R 57-42 D Denton Dallas Suburbs 65-33 R 57-37 R 54-46 R Collin Dallas Suburbs 65-33 R 55-39 R 53-47 R Harris Houston 49.5-49 D 54-42 D 58-41 D Dallas Dallas 57-42 D 60-34 D 66-33 D Fort Bend Houston Suburbs 53-46 R 51-45 D 56-44 D Travis Austin 60-36 D 66-27 D 74-25 D Bexar San Antonio 52-47 D 54-40 D 60-40 D When I look at this chart, the first thing that jumps out at me is the very bad trendline for Texas Republicans. From a 16 point statewide win in 2012 to a 9 point statewide win in 2016 to a 2.5 point statewide win in 2018. In the process, the trendlines in the individual counties are brutal. But secondly, the big development is how O’Rourke was able to consolidate the anti-Republican vote. As is evident in the chart, Cruz didn’t lag Trump’s vote share all that much. Indeed, the president received only about 1.1% more of the vote than Cruz. But O’Rourke got 7.2% more of the vote than Clinton did. In the end, O’Rourke was not able to pull off the statewide stunner- he probably needed to come a bit closer to winning Denton and Collin in order to do that- but he came awfully close and it set off a bunch of intrigue down ballot.

The US House Races

In the process, a whole bunch of action happened at the Congressional level. Texas has a brutally gerrymandered map in favor of the Republicans, yet that didn’t stop Democrats from making considerable gains. Their top two targets, the 32nd and the 7th districts in Dallas and Houston, respectively, flipped from R → D by solid margins, unseating longtime incumbents in the process. Additionally, the 23rd district, a swingy seat along the Rio Grande that suffers from normally terrible Hispanic turnout in Midterm years, barely stayed with the GOP. However, that was a bit of a surprise, as many Democrats had written off Gina Ortiz-Jones given the aforementioned turnout problems with the Dem base in Midterm cycles and the presence of popular moderate Republican incumbent Will Hurd. Polls had showed Ortiz-Jones trailing Hurd heavily in early October, so to see Hurd survive by just over 1,000 votes was still a shock. Given that Hispanic turnout in this area is much better in presidential years and that Trump lost this seat in 2016, I would expect it to be a top tier race in 2020, with Hurd at the top of Democratic target lists.

But in more surprising districts, Democrats came dangerously close to scoring big wins. They nearly knocked off longtime GOP incumbents in the 10th, 22nd, 24th, and 31st districts, and almost scored an open seat upset in the 21st district. Even in ultra-reach seats like the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 25th, Democrats were within single digits of scoring victories. This chart below shows a similar trendline from year-over-year results, comparing the presidential results in the districts with the Congressional results from Tuesday.

District Area 2012 result 2016 result 2018 result TX-02 Houston suburbs R+27 R+9 R+7.6 TX-03 Dallas suburbs R+30 R+14 R+10 TX-06 Dallas sub(ex)urbs R+17 R+12 R+7.7 TX-07 Houston R+21 D+1 D+4.5 TX-10 Houston-Austin R+20 R+9 R+4 TX-21 Austin-San Antonio-rural R+22 R+10 R+2.8 TX-22 Houston suburbs R+25 R+8 R+5 TX-23 Rio Grande Valley R+2.6 D+3.4 R+0.5 TX-24 Dallas suburbs R+22 R+6 R+3.2 TX-25 Austin-rural R+22 R+15 R+8.9 TX-31 Round Rock R+21 R+13 R+3.1 TX-32 Dallas and suburbs R+15.5 D+2 D+6.3

Once again, not a good trendline for the Republicans, with the exception of TX-23 for the aforementioned reasons.

Other statewide races

O’Rourke was unsurprisingly the best performing statewide Democrat, but he was able to keep some fellow Dems close. Team Blue had long lamented an embarrassingly bad gubernatorial candidate in Lupe Valdez, yet she also outperformed expectations, losing to incumbent Governor Greg Abbott by 13.4%. Both the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton dealt with some form of scandal, and Dems came close against those two, losing to the former by a margin of 51.3-46.4 and to the latter 50.6-47.0. Still, this is pretty significant. Remember all that talk of the 43% ceiling? Not just did O’Rourke smash it, but two other statewide candidates smashed it in the same night. While it may sound like a moral victory, it’s a really big deal (more on that later).

State Legislature

Entering the night, Republicans held a 21-10 majority in the State Senate and a 95-55 edge in the State House. At the end of the night, that is a 19-12 majority in the upper chamber and a 82-68 edge in the lower chamber. That pickup number in the State House is the single most in one election for the Democrats since 1964 and the overall power distribution in the chamber is by far the closest it has been since the 2010 midterm, when a red wave cemented the GOP with huge majorities and the Republicans were able to protect their reign with strict gerrymanders. Yet, it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that Texas Democrats have some real life in these chambers going forward. First let’s see where the gains came from. Using this handy map I found on Twitter from @ElectionFan1, most of the Democratic gains came in these similar areas. 6 seats were picked up in the Dallas area, 4 in the Austin-Round Rock area, and 2 in the Houston area. Yet, despite these big gains, there are still plenty of targets on the table for 2020, when the whole chamber is up again. Two GOP incumbents in districts Hillary Clinton won hung on by a couple hundred votes and will be clear targets in 2020, while Rep. Sarah Davis, who continues to defy political gravity in a Clinton +16 district (she won on Tuesday by 6 points), will continue to be a target. There are 5 other seats that were within four points in emerging swing districts on Tuesday night as well. Add all those up, and there are legitimately 8 targets- the new number needed for a majority- on the board in 2 years. That was inconceivable a week ago.

Local Races

Maybe the most incredible part of the bloodbath that went down in Texas on Tuesday was at the local level. Let’s start in Harris County (Houston), where Democrats swept all 59 county judicial races, including toppling longtime County Judge Ed Emmett. That includes 23 seats on the district bench, all 13 on family court, all 4 on for county civil judge, all 15 county misdemeanor judges, and all 4 county probate judges. In Dallas County, GOP District Attorney Faith Johnson was ousted by Democrat John Creuzot. Democrats flipped the four state appeals courts that serve Austin, Houston, and Dallas, and now hold majorities on 7 of the 14 state appeals courts. As the Texas Tribune writes in that article, prior to Tuesday, they held seats on just three. Period. These judicial and county commission positions were where the blue wave hit the hardest in Texas and like all the other down-ballot races, it can be tracked to turnout and enthusiasm generated by O’Rourke.

The Turnout Factor

One thing that has to be discussed in the context of this is how turnout in Texas skyrocketed. In the 2014 gubernatorial election, 4,718,268 Texans voted. In the 2018 gubernatorial election, over 8 million Texans voted. That’s just incredible. While it is true that turnout was up nationally as a whole, from about 36.7% in 2014 to 47% in 2018, turnout nearly doubled in Texas. Once again, that is chalked up to O’Rourke. While a number of inspiring candidates at the US House level should get credit too, Lizzie Fletcher, Collin Allred, Gina Ortiz-Jones, and MJ Hegar, to name a few, O’Rourke is the one who generated the buzz. He was the one who tried to win statewide as a Democrat in Texas for the first time in 24 years. He was the one who raised over $70 M and spent over $60 M on the race. He generated the enthusiasm, the crowds, the hope, and got people to the polls and his massive margins in Dallas and Harris Counties trickled down-ballot and allowed a number of Democrats to ride the wave into power. The one thing that I think is especially important about the turnout is that since it was nearly presidential levels (8.9 M votes cast in 2016, 8.3 M votes cast in 2018), it suggests that these trends are here to stay. While there is normally lots of caution about reading midterm results into future elections, when a midterm has turnout at the same levels as a presidential election, a lot of that caution can go away. The trends in Texas may be irreversible at this point.

Conclusion

So what does all of this tell us about Texas politically in the near future? I’m not entirely sure. This was a pretty friendly environment for Democrats after all, but so was 2006 and 2008, and Democrats were nowhere near this close back then. Many people have made comparisons between Texas and Virginia, for instance. Virginia in the mid-2000s was a state becoming close to swing state status, and was one of the few states to move towards Democrats between 2000 and 2004. It is true that Texas was also one of the few states to move towards Dems between 2012 and 2016, but it isn’t as close to being truly swingy as Virginia was. In 2004, Virginia was an R+3 state, while in 2016, Texas was an R+6 state. Still, that trendline is still evident. If we assume this was roughly a D+7 environment (where the national vote will probably end up), then the Partisan Voting Index (PVI) of Texas has gone from R+10 in 2012 to R+6 in 2016 to R+4.5 in 2018, using the Senate numbers for the 2018 calculation. As a result, 2020 should be a fascinating litmus test for Texas going forward. If it is even closer to the political center, say R+3 or 4, then look out.

Furthermore, the one thing this election result does assert is that the supposed “43% ceiling” is no more. O’Rourke and the other statewide Dems demolished that and are now firmly in the 46-48% range. However, Cruz still got about 51%, not far from the just over 52% that Trump got in 2016. The next hurdle for Texas Democrats to clear is to break the 50% ceiling, the amount needed to actually win the state. Building on the discussion of 2020, the areas where O’Rourke underperformed Clinton the most is in the frequently mentioned Rio Grande Valley, where low hispanic turnout in Midterm years makes the electorate much whiter and more conservative. This graph from J. Miles Coleman illustrates that and while better margins here wouldn’t have handed O’Rourke the race, he may have been able to touch 49% with it.

For Texas Democrats, the key going forward is to rebuild the state party. Not since the days of Ann Richards has the Texas Democratic Party had a functioning statewide and down-ballot ticket. Its strength was slowly gutted after many rural and conservative white voters flipped to become Republicans over the following decade. Since then, it’s been a joke, with no GOTV operations, no money, and no infrastructure. The O’Rourke campaign and has now breathed life back into this apparatus. His prodigious GOTV operation and the insane amount of money that he raised has provided the beginning of an infrastructure needed.

There’s a pretty good chance that help will come from the national party, too. After watching the 2018 midterm results, it’s pretty hard for Democrats to not begin to heavily invest in Texas. While I was skeptical of the “sun belt path” for the Democratic Party in the wake of 2016, I’m much more sold on the idea now. In 2020, the states of Georgia, Texas, and Arizona may well be more competitive than Ohio, for instance.

FIelding good candidates in the key US House and State House races is paramount for 2020, and there’s a decent chance that the US Senate race with incumbent John Cornyn could be competitive. Most of all, continuing to raise money is key. Continuing to make progress going forward will require Texas Democrats to flip Collin and Denton Counties, while continuing to make Fort Bend, Williamson, Hayes, Tarrant, Bexar, Harris, and Dallas counties bluer. These areas continue to see explosive growth and being able to capitalize on that would be huge for Democrats. There is still a long way to go, but Texas is starting to look more like a swing state than a red state. Will it happen in 2 years? Probably not, but 10 years down the line, Texas Republicans should really start to worry. A week ago, the “flipping Texas blue” line was a joke. Now, not so much.