Beto O'Rourke's Path To Victory Runs Along The Border

[UCmeNdc]

Turning Texas blue means radically changing the state’s voter turnout demographics.



O’Rourke, who describes himself as a lifelong fronterizo — Spanish for “border resident” — didn’t always feel such pride. Like many young folks in the brain-drained border zone, he grew up wanting to leave El Paso, he said. It wasn’t until he left and returned as an adult that he began to rethink the significance of growing up in a city that produced the bands At the Drive In and Mars Volta (O’Rourke has personal connections to both), where Elizabeth Taylor spent her first honeymoon and where Mariano Azuela wrote Los de abajo, one of the defining novels of the Mexican Revolution.

“Kids like me had internalized what the rest of the country thought about us,” O’Rourke said. “That we weren’t supposed to amount to much. That we were just a dusty border town.” That’s wrong, he contended. The towns and cities of the U.S.-Mexico border are “a place for the ambitious,” for those who want to “take a chance and bet everything on bigness and on greatness.”


He has excitement on his side. Despite eschewing corporate donations, he’s nearly matched Cruz in fundraising. A poll by NBC News and Marist released last week had O’Rourke trailing by just 4 percentage points. An electronic poll released by Emerson College on Monday had the two candidates nearly tied, with Cruz at 38 percent against O’Rourke’s 37 percent and more than a fifth of respondents undecided.

But O’Rourke faces the same problem that has bedeviled the Texas Democratic Party for decades: How to translate their natural demographic advantage into success at the polls. White, non-Hispanics make up just 42 percent of the Texas population, mirroring the demographics of solidly blue California. But low turnout among Latinos, who lean Democratic — along with obstacles to representation like gerrymandering and a controversial photo ID requirement to vote — have kept Republicans in control of all statewide offices and both chambers of the state legislature.

In a typical midterm election, only about 22 percent of eligible Hispanic voters cast a ballot. For O’Rourke to even have a chance, that number needs to rise by at least 10 percentage points, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. Even if that happens, O’Rourke will also need a bump in the millennial vote — another “low-propensity” voter group.


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/beto-orourke-texas-border-hispanic-vote_us_5b86e5cfe4b0cf7b00318d1d

[Me.]

1. Not To Mention That Nearly 25% Of Registered Latinos

are Comrade Trump supporters

[Horse with no Name]

2. I had a millennial I work with tell me the other day

That his plan to legalize weed is playing well with her peer group.

[Gothmog]

3. Texas is not red state or a blue state but a non-voting state

If Beto can increase voter turnout out in the border region, then he will win. Texas would be a blue state if Latino voters voted in the same percentage as Latino voters vote in California

[Awsi Dooger]

4. But Texas has considerably higher percentage of black voters than California

With blacks our net per 100 voters is much higher than any other major category.

The two states are wildly different in every category.

These are the percentages of the electorate from the 2016 exit poll:

Whites: California 48%, Texas 57%
Blacks: California 6%, Texas 11%
Hispanics: California 31%, Texas 24%
Asians: California 12%, Texas 5%

Beto probably needs to shove that white share closer to 53 or 54%. But here's the problem: Texas normally votes more red in midterms, not less red. Hispanics don't show up nationwide in midterms. I posted that link the other day. Beto needs to take a national tendency and reverse it in his own state. Very difficult task.