Analysis: Election night results show Republican hold on Texas is slipping

Although Ted Cruz and other Republican candidates continued the GOP’s 20-year sweep of statewide offices Tuesday night, Beto O’Rourke’s strong showing provided a loud warning that Texas is becoming increasingly competitive for Democrats.

Cruz won re-election to a second term by 3 percentage points over El Pasoan O’Rourke, the closest margin since Republicans began their electoral stranglehold on Texas in 1998. The biggest reason for the closing gap is the expanding urbanization of Texas. The state’s voting population is increasingly concentrated in seven major urban centers and five big suburbs.

Those 12 counties contributed 63 percent of all Texas votes on Tuesday, up from 60 percent in the last midterm election in 2014. Voters in those counties are increasingly Democratic. On Tuesday night, O’Rourke won nearly 58 percent of the vote in those 12 heavily populated counties. In 2014, Democrat David Alameel won only 41 percent in those counties in his race against incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

Urban and large suburban areas in Texas are much like big cities and surrounding suburbs across the country. They are attracting younger, more diverse and better educated populations. Voter data shows that those three factors – youth, racial and ethnic diversity and a college education – are predictors of Democratic voters.

Cruz won re-election because the state’s rural and exurban areas voted overwhelmingly Republican, as they have done for years. His commanding performance in those areas was enough to overcome O’Rourke’s strengths in more populated areas.

Even outside the 12 big counties, Republican strength may be weakening. O’Rourke won 32 percent of the vote in the other 242 counties outside the state’s big population zones, up from Alameel’s 24 percent in 2014. O’Rourke famously visited all of the state’s 254 counties, which likely played a role in the higher Democratic vote. Other Texas Democrats on the statewide ballot didn’t show similar gains.

The numbers are clear: the large urban and suburban counties are making up a greater proportion of the state’s voter base, and people in those areas are increasingly likely to vote for Democrats. That’s why President Trump carried Texas by only nine points in 2016, down from Mitt Romney’s 16-point win in the 2012 presidential race.

O’Rourke became the first Democrat in decades to win all seven of the state’s urban counties – Harris (Houston), Dallas, Bexar (San Antonio), Tarrant (Fort Worth), Travis (Austin), El Paso and Hidalgo (McAllen.) He also became the first Democrat in decades to win two major suburban counties, Williamson (Round Rock and other areas near Austin) and Fort Bend (Sugar Land and other towns near Houston.)

O’Rourke was competitive in two traditional Republican suburban strongholds, Collin and Denton counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. He won about 46 percent in each of those counties, well above Alameel’s 28 percent in 2014. Montgomery County (Conroe and other towns near Houston) was the only big suburb to hold strong for Cruz, with O’Rourke winning only 27 percent of the vote. But that was almost double Alameel’s percentage.

Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and Obama administration Cabinet member, said Tuesday he believes Texas will be competitive in the 2020 presidential election. Castro will decide by the end of the year whether to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

“Even though Beto didn’t win, he was very competitive in a midterm year,” Castro said at O’Rourke’s election party at Southwest University Park. “So if you’re in a presidential year where you’re running two or two and a half points better than in a midterm year, that’s right at 50 percent. I believe that Texas is very much winnable, and the 38 electoral votes of the state are up for grabs.”

Most political analysts would likely say Castro is far too optimistic. O’Rourke proved to be a uniquely popular candidate, and there’s no guarantee other Democrats can replicate the enthusiasm he created. Trump will be a heavy favorite to win Texas in 2020.

But by 2024, Texas likely will be a battleground state in the presidential election. Those 12 big counties will comprise more than two-thirds of all Texas voters. Republicans have shown little ability to seriously compete in big cities, and their longtime grip on suburban areas is weakening.

Texas isn’t yet blue or even purple, in the political vernacular. But if it’s still red, it won’t be for much longer.

Robert Moore, ABC-7’s exclusive 2018 election analyst, is an El Paso journalist who has covered local and state politics since 1986.