Question

Latinos comprise almost 40 percent of the population in Texas. Observers note that the growth of the Latino population outpaces the growth of the Anglo and African American populations. Of course, this is just one of many demographic trends Texas is experiencing. What are the political implications of these trends? How might this trend affect voting patterns or one-party dominance?

Answer 1

Texas is growing more than any other state, says Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter, and half of the growth is from people moving to Texas from elsewhere, mainly California, New York, Illinois and Florida. And while Texas "has sort of a wild west persona," it in fact is growing much more urban, Potter says. A report by the Texas Demographic Center projects that Texas' population is increasingly concentrated in a handful of metro areas, and that the metropolitan population will double in the 40 years after 2010. Houston, Texas's largest city, is one of the most ethnically and racially diverse cities in the nation and like the next three biggest cities in the state – San Antonio, Dallas and Austin – it trends Democratic.

The possibility of Texas turning politically purple has short- and long-term effects that set analysts' hearts a-flutter. But the mere fact that Texas is becoming younger and more ethnically diverse doesn't guarantee a massive political shift.

That goes for their politics as well. Most Texas Latinos "are anti-abortion, are social conservatives, are pro-business. They don't want higher taxes, and they like the idea of small government," says Hilda Garza DeShazo, a McAllen Republican running for the state House of Representatives. "Most of us want to find a reasonable solution to immigration – don't harass the people coming here and working hard and looking for a better life for their families," but don't have an open border either, she says.

There's more to the demographic shift than just ethnicity: Big companies, especially tech firms, have brought young people (statistically more likely to be Democratic) with them from other states -- and many of those states are more liberal than Texas. Toyota, for example, persuaded more than 70 percent of the staff to relocate to Texas from California and Kentucky. Former lifeguard Mark McLaughlin, 28, says he does sometimes miss his surfing -- but not the parking lot-like traffic on route 405. Mark Hernandez, 34, and his wife, Michaela Sears, also made the move to the Plano office; neither is planning to leave the state, happy to find good employment, lighter traffic and lower real estate prices in Texas.

The transplanted employees bring a little California flavor with them. There are two Starbucks coffee shops on the Toyota campus, and they sell burritos as well.

But, demographically speaking, while minority-majority Texas may look like Nevada and California, when it comes to voting patterns and state policy, it looks a lot more like its conservative neighbors of Oklahoma and Arkansas.

"Texas has always been red, when you're talking about government. But when you look at the people, Texas is blue. The blue people don't vote," Pauline Mins, 51 and a transplant from Buffalo, N.Y., says while toiling away at a Dallas phone bank for Beto O'Rourke, the Democrat running against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

Every statewide elected official is Republican; both chambers of the state legislature are heavily GOP, and state policies reflect it.

Abortion laws in Texas are among the nation's most restrictive, requiring waiting periods and mandatory counseling before the procedure, parental notification and consent for minors seeking abortions, and insurance coverage for abortion for public employees only when the women's lives are at stake or if their health would be severely compromised. The state has a law banning so-called "sanctuary cities," requiring local officials to cooperate with immigration authorities.

Gun laws are lenient, while voting can be arduous, given Texas's strict voter ID law. Concealed handguns are allowed on college campuses, but while a gun license is acceptable ID to vote, a student ID is not. Texas' Board of Education recently voted to take 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as deaf-blind activist Helen Keller, out of the high school curriculum.

But the demographic shift may be giving Democrats a toehold at the local level. The mayors of Dallas, Austin and Houston are Democrats, and there are two transgender people running for city council in Austin. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced recently he would not push for the so-called "bathroom bill" requiring people to use the public restroom that corresponds with the sex assigned to them at birth – a bill that conservative politicians champion but the big businesses they're courting do not.

The new residents, especially those who move to Texas for tech work, are heavily favoring Democrats, Espinosa of Progress Texas says, pointing to a report by his organization based on voter turnout data. There were 1.5 million first-time voters in 2016, and the growth margin favored Democrats five-to-one, the report said, culling numbers from the Texas voter file. In Collin County, where Plano is located, the result was even more lopsided, with 39,209 more Democratic votes cast from 2012 to 2016, compared to just 4,126 more Republican votes. (President Donald Trump still beat Clinton by a 56-39 percent margin in Collin County.)

Millennials are far more likely to lean Democratic (59 percent do, compared to 32 percent who lean Republican, according to a Pew Research Center report earlier this year), so the movement of young people to the state is statistically likely to help Democrats. Texas is among just a few states that saw its 18- to 34-year-old population grow by more than 5 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to a report by the Brookings Institution earlier this year, with the Houston and Dallas among the top three metro areas in the country.

It's still a hard climb for Democrats in the Lone Star State, but demographic trends are slowly starting to change the landscape, Morales says. "I think at the end of the day, Texas is still the dam that holds up the Republican Party," he says. "But they're going to have to move heaven and earth to keep it red."