The odds are long, they say, in a state that hasn’t voted Democratic for president in 40 years. But in recent polling data and early voting results, they are also seeing signs of the perfect storm of demographic and political forces it would take to turn Texas blue.
According to some Republican and nonpartisan pollsters, Donald Trump is turning off enough core GOP constituencies and motivating Hispanic voters in ways that could pump up Clinton’s performance to higher levels than a Democratic nominee has seen in decades. In 2012, Mitt Romney won the state in a 16-point blowout. The current spread is just 5 points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. [...]
Jacob Monty, a prominent Republican Hispanic activist based in Houston who resigned from Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council after an incendiary Trump speech on immigration, said he will not vote for the top of the ticket but will vote Republican down the ballot — highlighting the failure, even in deep-red Texas, to fully consolidate the GOP base behind the party nominee. [...]
A Clinton victory would also require a massive rejection of Trump by the Republicans who dominate the Dallas and Houston suburbs and formed the core of the George W. Bush coalition. While establishment Republicans appear to have ditched Trump in crucial areas like the Philadelphia suburbs and in suburban enclaves in Virginia and Colorado, there’s little sign of significant suburban erosion in Texas. Some Republicans actually see evidence from early voting suggesting high turnout in Republican-leaning areas of Fort Worth’s Tarrant County and in the suburbs north of Dallas.
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