This is the second installment of a recurring series in the final month of the 2020 election cycle—a granular look at where the battlegrounds will be decided. We’ll focus on the counties to watch on Election Night 2020, and we continue our exploration in Texas.
It seems inconceivable, but the Democrats are on the verge of making Texas into, at a minimum, a purple state. Not only does Joe Biden have a puncher’s chance at the state’s 38 electoral votes, but the Democrats have an outside chance at picking off the Senate seat held by veteran incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, and have legitimate chances of picking off a few more U.S. House seats (the Democrats nabbed two seats in the Lone Star State in 2018).
Also, in a prospect that is largely flying under the radar, but might have the most profound long term impact: the Democrats are a legitimate threat to win the state’s House of Representatives. The Democrats need to pick up 9 seats to win the House, and recent polling of the key races showed the Democrats currently in the lead in 11 seats (in fairness, some of those races were extremely close).
As we said in the first installment (when we investigated the state of Georgia), winning a state is about more than just winning the “swing” counties. Victory can come by taking the swing counties, of course, but in Texas, the key ingredient is also making one-time deep-red counties a shade of purple come Election Day. Also, in a diverse state like Texas, it is essential to maximize the damage where Democrats traditionally do well. So our examination will be in three parts: swing counties, “containment” counties (traditionally Republican), and “expansion” counties (traditionally Democratic).
Texas, for eons, has been a long-term project for the Democrats—a rapidly growing and diversifying state. But the future is now for Texas Democrats. The polling in the state is closer for the Democrats than, say, Pennsylvania has been for the GOP. What follows is the path to improbable victory for Texas Democrats, a path which takes them to all corners of this massive state.
Before we begin this exploration, a quick note based off of some really thoughtful comments to the last piece, on Georgia. Readers wondered why some counties were included and why some weren’t, and some asked whether this means that the other counties “don’t matter”.
The answer to the latter question is: of course not! The point of this exercise is to look at a handful of counties in order to better understand the trajectory of Election Night. To do so properly, we couldn’t explore every county. By God, there are over 250 counties in Texas! So the goal was to pick less than ten counties. Counties that had enough of a vote base to be consequential on Election Night, and had a story to tell, so to speak.
Obviously any blue shift in a county like Williamson (with roughly 200,000 votes) could be offset by 25 conservative counties with 8000 voters each. But that would require you to remember 25 different counties, and that seemed like a bit of a heavy lift.
And, in this case, we’re looking at counties that have a trajectory that might shift in a way noticeable enough on Election Night to matter. This does not mean other counties don’t matter. Counties like Dallas, Harris (Houston), and Travis (Austin) are a very, very big deal, and central to Democratic prospects in the state. But those are certainly “known quantities” whereas several of the counties in our study here fly much further under the radar. Doesn’t mean the aforementioned three urban counties don’t matter—in fact, Democrats can’t win without a robust margin in all three of them.
So, with that caveat in mind, let’s look at nine counties in Texas that could easily wind up telling the story of the 2020 election in the Lone Star State.
SWING COUNTIES: FORT BEND, TARRANT, AND WILLIAMSON
The swing counties take Democrats to the three of the largest metro areas in the state: Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Fort Bend County is a populous and still growing suburban county immediately to the west of Houston’s Harris County. It cast 262,000 votes in 2016, and is exceedingly likely to max out over 300,000 votes this year. Tarrant County is the largest of the counties in this particular discussion, casting only around a hundred thousand fewer votes than neighboring Dallas County. Lastly, Williamson County is a once deep-red patch of turf north of Austin’s deep-blue Travis County. Williamson cast over 203,000 votes in 2016, and will easily exceed that this year.
Much like the swing counties in Georgia that we discussed last week, the reason these are swing counties is the gradual movement throughout the decade of these counties from varying shades of red to a position of relative parity. This is especially true in Williamson County, where Mitt Romney romped easily in 2012, but Beto O’Rourke actually narrowly led Ted Cruz (the margins below are the average of all eight statewide races, ranging from Governor to Railroad Commissioner).
COUNTY NAME |
2012 D VS. R MARGIN |
2016 D VS. R MARGIN |
2018 D VS. R MARGIN |
FORT BEND |
R + 6.8% |
D + 6.6% |
D + 6.8% |
TARRANT |
R + 15.7% |
R + 8.6% |
R + 5.0% |
WILLIAMSON |
R + 21.5% |
R + 9.7% |
R + 3.8% |
The metrics here, if the end goal is a Joe Biden win in Texas and significant movement at the federal and state legislative levels, demand a continuation of this movement, if not an acceleration of this movement. In other words, it’s probably safe to say that Biden needs a double digit win in Fort Bend, and to carry both Tarrant and Williamson. After all, O’Rourke accomplished all three and STILL came up a little short. So it seems highly unlikely that Biden could pull off the W without, at a minimum matching O’Rourke or improving upon him in these three vital counties.
CONTAINMENT COUNTIES: COLLIN, DENTON, AND MONTGOMERY
In fairness, one of these ones is not like the others. Collin County and Denton County are suburban Dallas, to the immediate north of the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth. And their prospects for 2020 run on very similar tracks—which makes sense, given how closely they’ve historically performed relative to one another. The two counties combined for 660,000 votes in 2016, and there is a nonzero chance that they could combine for over 800,000 votes this year, a sign of their still immense growth as well as the already palpable voter interest this year in Texas.
Montgomery County, to the north of Houston, is an entirely different breed. It contains the well populated and deeply conservative suburbs to the north of Houston. And it is blood red. In 2012, Mitt Romney carried it with 80% of the vote. In 2016, Donald Trump carried the county 73-22. Still a landside, of course, but a considerably diminished margin from 2012. In 2018, Beto O’Rourke lost here in a landslide, but the margin continued to diminish (72-27). Other Democrats statewide fared less well, but the overall average margin was still better than Trump’s winning margin two years prior.
COUNTY NAME |
2012 D VS. R MARGIN |
2016 D VS. R MARGIN |
2018 D VS. R MARGIN |
COLLIN |
R + 31.5% |
R + 16.7% |
R + 13.1% |
DENTON |
R + 31.5% |
R + 20.0% |
R + 14.9% |
MONTGOMERY |
R + 60.7% |
R + 51.1% |
R + 49.0% |
Let’s take the two DFW metro counties together. For Joe Biden to have much of a chance here, his numbers need to look more like Beto O’Rourke’s did, and less like...well...every other Democrat. Note that while the average margin for Democrats in these two vote-rich suburban counties was still in the double digits, Beto O’Rourke only lost Collin by 6 points, and Denton by 8 points. Biden will probably have to to continue to do even a little better than that. If early vote is tallied and Biden doesn’t have a lead in both counties (remember the early vote will tilt heavily Democratic), it’s probably going to be tough for him to win the state.
As for Montgomery? Heck, there all he has to do is not truly get smooshed. Based on past performances, if Biden can manage to limit Trump’s margin of victory in this slice of GOPdom down to forty points or less, he will have done himself a world of good.
EXPANSION COUNTIES: CAMERON, EL PASO, AND HIDALGO
For Texas Democrats, they may need to go west to find those elusive final votes to push them over the top. The heavily Latino counties along the border have long been a critical reservoir of Democratic votes. These three large counties are capable of providing close to 400,000 votes, with better than two-thirds of them typically falling to the Democrats.
But there is a cause for concern: actually managing to pocket the votes in this particular region can prove to be particularly elusive.
Voter turnout in this trio of counties was actually quite strong in 2016 for Hillary Clinton, with turnout growth of 20-24% over 2012 turnout. That amounted to nearly double the statewide growth, which was just shy of the teens.
But in 2018, the massive turnout growth experienced in Texas largely missed the RGV. Cameron was at just 84.6% of their 2016 turnout, and Hidalgo was at 87.5% of their 2016 turnout. Only El Paso County, with hometown candidate Beto O’Rourke leading the surge, turned out massively, with the county clocking in at 95.1% of the 2016 numbers (for reference: the statewide average was 93.3%).
What’s more: the dive in margins in Cameron and Hidalgo (and the relative lack of a dive in El Paso) tells us that the non-habitual voters who sat out in 2018 were strongly composed of Democratic leaners.
COUNTY NAME |
2012 D VS. R MARGIN |
2016 D VS. R MARGIN |
2018 D VS. R MARGIN |
CAMERON |
D + 31.1% |
D + 32.5% |
D + 21.1% |
EL PASO |
D + 47.5% |
D + 43.1% |
D + 40.9% |
HIDALGO |
D + 41.8% |
D + 40.5% |
D + 34.9% |
In fact, El Paso County’s performance might show the way forward. That additional dollop of turnout in 2018 was big—in raw numbers, it meant that in just this one county, Democrats on average picked up about 8000 votes on the margin. If Cameron and Hidalgo had held their ground similarly, that could’ve been another 7000-8000 votes. This same phenomenon happened in some other smaller counties in the region, and the cumulative effect starts to add up in a real and significant way.
For Biden to win, he needs to not only get Obama and Clinton’s margins in the RGV, he needs a massive turnout. A 2018-esque share of the statewide vote in the region simply won’t be sufficient. And he doesn’t need unrealistic margins here, if the turnout is solid. He just needs to match or slightly exceed Clinton’s margins here, in all probability, and let the shifts in the rest of the state take hold.