The Texas Popular Vote: A Flip from Blue to Red
We’re leading up to a look at the importance of Texas’ electoral votes in the next post but we’ll look at the popular vote first.
I read somewhere that “if the Democrats can turn Texas blue they will have a lock on future presidential elections.” NO, and we’ll see why, but YES, a switch of the Texas vote from its current status as a red state to a blue state would have flipped several recent elections.
Note that this is a very different outcome from my previous post about ‘What if Texas left the Union (“Let My Texas People Go”) . In that scenario taking Texas out of the picture only affected one recent election: Gore would have beaten Bush Jr. in 2000. As of the upcoming 2024 election Texas will have 40 electoral votes, second only to California’s 54. Both states are huge electoral prizes. Florida with 30 and New York with 28 round out the ‘Big 4.’ Consider that if you won all of the Big 4 you would have more than half (57%) of the 269 electoral votes you need to win the presidency.
Before we look at the chart that shows the result of a Texas flip (next post), consider that Texas, like many Southern states, was solid blue for much of the early 1900s. Like the rest of the South and most of the nation, Texas voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Democratic successor, Harry Truman, for five consecutive solid wins…
