more from the article:
For months, Biden’s polling average has consistently been within the margin of error in Texas. And the race continues to tighten. But what is important to understand is since the 2008 election, polling of the Texas electorate has significantly underestimated Democratic performance because, unlike demographically declining states, Texas has a growing, dynamic electorate with many new voters who are younger, more likely to have college degrees and more likely to be people of color — and often difficult to poll. As a result of this rapid demographic change, Texas is not only more racially diverse and urban than most other swing states, but also more rapidly trending Democratic. Unlike the Rust Belt, where the polls underestimated Trump’s strength on Election Day, the polls in Texas underestimated Hillary Clinton’s performance by 4.9 percent.
The modern Dem party is the party of metro areas (urbs and suburbs) and college towns, and Texas has alot of them. The small town centric Rust Belt is trending away from us. Biden is doing much better with non-college whites this time, and we can't continue to hemorrhage such voters in the future. But what is clear is that the Sunbelt (AZ, TX, GA, NC) seems to look more like what the Dem party actually is, rather than what it was.
If Biden were to win TX it actually would be less shocking than it was for Trump to win the Rustbelt, where the polls were wrong due to a failure to catch demographic realignment. It's possible (as the article alludes to) the poll models are also wrong in TX this time for similar reasons, which would mean Biden could win by a few points there.
The article speaks about PA and the chaos that could ensue there - and I agree with that analysis. PA lacks a history of doing mail in voting and even for the in person voting has new machines that could lead to chaos (and hacking). IOW, we should have other paths that don't include PA - and TX should be one of them. OH and IA also look possible.
FL 'should' be the state that does it for us, but it has a Latino population that is more conservative than elsewhere. The Dem party in the state historically has been outsmarted by the GOP there, who seemingly has rigged the state. IOW, FL is not a state we should count on (though should always try to win).
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