The State of Voting Blue in Texas

Now I’m no Nate Silver, Nate Silver plays in another ballpark and on a different plane of existence it would seem, but still I like to look at how things are going in Texas vis-à-vis the state of Democratic Party voting in Texas. Straight ticket voting for the most part.

 

I use high-disinterest statewide races to do my math. High-disinterest (aka low interest) races reflect straight ticket voting trends like nothing else. This year it’s hard because there is only one race that attracted a Democratic challenger in a Supreme Court race.

This year, Nathan Hecht outpolled Michelle Petty, the Democrat on the ballot, by 4,116,066 to 3,208,434 votes, or just a little over 900,000 votes, in Supreme Court Justice Place 6.

In 2008, Texas Supreme Court Justice in Place 8, Phil Johnson, garnered 4,018,396 to Linda Yanez’ 3,428,179 votes.

A little less than a 600,000  vote difference.

And I know that’s just two races and I am ignoring Sam Houston’s race, but with a name like Sam Houston you have to assume what I have come to call the “Schwarzenegger Effect.”

But things aren’t looking any too good for future prospects for a Democratic Texas governor or a US Senator, and I have a theory why this is happening: the Republican Party is becoming a truly regional party. It is becoming a party of the Solid South (except for Florida). Statewide offices occupied by Democrats are going to be as rare as hen’s teeth for a few more years to come until we can get some truly game-changing changes in our demographics.

So for a while at least, I am going to have to be satisfied with watching Democratic gains from the sidelines. Watch as other states send “binders full of women” to the US Senate, and all of the other good things that happened in everywhere but Texas last Tuesday.