Could Texas Overturn? Why the GOP stronghold is worth seeing...

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While a Democratic president hasn’t won Texas since Jimmy Carter in 1976, recent public and private polls suggest the race is competitive. This week during Thirty-five eight In the last survey average, Trump is 1.3 points ahead of the respected non-partisan online newsletter Cooking political report moved the state to “toss” of “slim Republicans” leading to speculation: Could Texas really turn around?

Here are some reasons Texas will be such a fascinating state on Election Night:

The Electoral College: Texas is a huge state with a huge population, which means anyone who wins it gets a whopping 38 votes for the electoral college – the second largest after California with 55 votes.

Put simply, if Biden wins Texas, he will win 14 percent of the total of 270 votes required to become president. As former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke wrote recently Die Washington Post: “Joe Biden can end the election on election night. All it takes is an investment in Texas. ”

Demographic changes: Texas is getting less white and more brown. In 2018, for every white person who came to Texas, nearly nine Latinos moved to the state, according to census figures.

Latinos are not monolithic, mind you: most have traditionally leaned to the left, but some are drawn to Trump’s tax cuts, his strong personality, and his anti-socialist rhetoric. The Asian community, while a smaller part of the population, is growing rapidly as well, growing 49 percent since 2010.

The ethnic makeup of Texas is currently 41 percent white, 40 percent Latinos, 13 percent black and about 5 percent Asian. A growing number of Democratic California residents have also moved to Texas in search of more affordable housing.

A FiveThirtyEight analysis of voting patterns in Texas also suggests that more white college-educated voters are moving to Democrats.

An energetic electorate: One of the challenges in Texas was getting people to vote, especially from non-white communities. But the state broke electoral records this year: by the last day of early voting on Friday (US time), more than 9 million Texans had cast their votes, exceeding the state’s turnout from 2016.

Voter turnout will be driven by youth voters, who, according to Tufts University, will be driven by issues like climate change, race and affordable health care. The same research also shows that early voting under 30 has increased more than 600 percent compared to the same time four years ago.

Biden’s Big Oil Flaw: This could hurt the Democrats. In his final presidential debate, Biden suggested deviating from the oil industry in his election.

While he later tried to clear up his comments – he insisted that he just stop giving federal grants to industry – the Trump campaign has taken up the comments to claim that Biden is destroying jobs and soaring energy prices will drift.

Biden’s greater desire for more renewable energy matters in Texas, where oil and gas have fueled the state’s growth for generations. “Houston is, if you will, the exploration and production capital of the Gulf of Mexico,” said GOP strategist Karl Rove Fox News this week. “This policy will be devastating.”

Floor game and celebrities galore: The mobilization efforts to turn Texas around were remarkable, building on the army of volunteers that Beto O’Rourke had amassed in 2018 during his insurgent bid to oust Republican Ted Cruz from the U.S. Senate.

O’Rourke narrowly lost, but his formidable campaign was enough to shake the GOP and strengthen his party. Since then, the Texas Democrats and affiliated groups have spent months doing phone banking, knocking on the door (within COVID rules), and using the power of social media to register tens of thousands of new voters.

Seinfeld actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, comedian Amy Schumer, Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria, and Hollywood actor John Cusack are among the many celebrities involved in the Texas blue campaign.

COVID, COVID, COVID: When the US was hit by coronavirus deaths earlier this year, Texas was one of the worst hit hotspots in America. The state, led by Governor Greg Abbott, an ally of Trump, had set confusing lockdown rules, rushed to reopen the economy as early as May, and initially refused to issue masks.

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When The Age visited in August to speak with voters about the election, some counties had even begun ordering refrigerated trucks to store corpses as morgues filled up.

While testing and tracking has improved since then, there is no doubt that the first response to the virus this year will be considered at the ballot box for many Texans.

After three days in the presidential campaign, the tide appears to be changing in Texas. Whether the red state will finally turn blue remains to be seen, but the Democrats dare to dream while the Republicans take nothing for granted.