What if Texas goes blue?

November is coming fast. Election Day is bearing down on us like a chore, and we must check off our list. While the focus is on battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a rising swing state — Texas — could decide both the presidency and the Senate.

What if Texas goes blue? What if Kamla Harris wins the White House and Democrats win the Senate? Donald Trump and his supporters already refused to accept the results of an election where he won ruby red Texas; what do you think he and his supporters will say about an election where the Lone Star State turns left?

Texas has been trending blue for a decade due to a shift in business and population. From 2009 to 2021, more companies (117) moved to Texas than any other state, most of which came from deep blue California. As a result, Texas gained two additional congressional seats (moving from 36 to 38) after the 2020 census, while California lost two. The population shift has continued; from 2020 to 2021, Texas’s population grew more than any other state.

While Texas has gone red in every presidential election since 1980, the margin of victory has declined since 2012, going from 15.8 percent to 9.1 percent in 2016 and to 5.8 percent in 2020. Voter turnout from 2016 to 2020 increased in Texas by 25.8 percent, and Trump received more votes in 2020 than in 2016, but a smaller share. Meanwhile, Democrats’ share increased from 43.2 percent to 46.5 percent. Suggesting Republicans are not losing support but “that most new Texas voters are more likely to vote Democrat” makes sense because many of the new voters came from California.

It's not just the presidential race that could hang on Texas; it could be the Senate, too. In 2018, Ted Cruz narrowly defeated Beto O'Rourke by 220,000 votes to keep his Senate seat. Currently, Cruz is in a tight race with Colin Allred. Allred is out-fundraising Cruz, and it has Cruz worried. He appeared recently on Sean Hannity, saying, "I'm getting pounded every day. We had a poll that came out yesterday — showed it is a one-point race. And we're getting viciously outspent."

Republicans are likely to gain Senate seats in Montana and West Virginia, so if Allred can surprise Cruz and Harris can surprise Trump, Democrats could win the White House and maintain the narrowest of majorities in the Senate.

While Texas is trending blue — and the writing is on the wall that it will happen sooner than later — it’s still a long shot for Harris to win Texas in 2024. In the latest polls, Trump is leading Harris by 5.6 percent. Allred might have a better chance; he is only trailing Cruz by an aggregated 3.7 percent.

However, it’s important to remember that polls use “weighting” to reflect the population's composition. In the past, weighting has caused errors because pollsters have failed to take in enough variables. “Some groups of people — such as older adults and college graduates — are more likely to take surveys,” states the Pew Research Center. Many pollsters have made adjustments, increasing the number of variables, but we have yet to see the results. Considering most of the new voters in Texas are working-age individuals, it’s possible to see how they could get left out.

For decades, Pennsylvania was part of the Democrats’ blue wall, but in 2016, Trump broke through, turning Pennsylvania red. That victory was the culmination of a shift that had been making Philadelphia deeper blue but turning the rest of Pennsylvania redder. Trump’s message resonated with Pennsylvania voters. He beat Hillary Clinton not just with big gains in the middle of the state but also by closing the gap in Philadelphia County. Clinton and her supporters were devastated. The shock left many of them in tears.

In Texas, Democrats increased their vote percentage share in both of the most populous areas (+3.4 percent) and in the least populous (+2.3 percent) districts from 2016 to 2020. While it may be unlikely, it’s not impossible that Texas turns blue. And if it does, Harris would only need to win one of the other current battleground states to take the White House. I wonder what the shock would do to Trump and his supporters?

If Texas were to go blue, Trump would probably say the election was rigged. Hopefully, he has learned a lesson from last time and won’t hold another rally where he urges people to go to the Capitol. He will likely do anything else within his power, like pointing to the dirty history of Texas politics, to fight the results in court and in the court of public opinion, which could divide America even more.

If the current trends continue, if the Democrats spend enough and drive out enough new voters, we might find out exactly what Trump will do. Is Congress prepared for that possibility?

Jeff Mayhugh is the founding editor of Politics and Parenting and the president of East Coast Operations for No Cap Fund.

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What if Texas goes blue?

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