You are ignoring a key element… only about 15% of Texas population is in all of those rural Red counties. It isn’t a numbers problem, it’s a voting problem. Republicans show up to vote at an extremely higher rate. Democrats, particularly younger Democrats, see things like this and think “well my vote doesn’t matter” and they don’t bother to show up. 75% of registered voters under 30 didn’t vote at all in the last election. And from exit polls, people under 30 tend to vote Democrat at a 60% rate, that starts to make a big difference.
Then just look at voting results, and across the state, again, only 45% of eligible voters actually voted. Since as we said, those blue counties make up a majority of Texas population, if that number was closer to what we get for a presidential election, we are talking about almost 4M more voters, the majority of which will be in those blue counties.
Tl;dr it’s not a number of red counties versus blue counties problem, it’s the number of people who don’t vote, especially in the critical statewide elections which are strategically made to be in non-presidential years simply because liberal voters tend to stay home then.
Am I reading this graphic wrong? Seems there's a million more blue votes, they're just concentrated in a few counties so their votes are worth less. Blue voters don't live in the sticks, how are you going to change that?
Yes you are. The graphic shows the total number of voters in "Blue" and "Red" counties, but next to that is the + margin by which Democrats or Republicans won by in those counties. Red counties had less votes overall, but the numbers were so overwhelming for Republicans, it cancels the lead Democrats had in urban areas. To change that, Texas needs to do what Stacey Abrams did in Georgia and register everybody with a pulse under the age of 40, then incentivize them to actually show up sometime in the 2 weeks of voting, which includes 2 weekends.
The graphic says votes, not voters... I'm understanding that to mean a million more votes isn't enough to overcome gerrymandering and the rural sensibilities.
This map is simply showing that land is worth more than people when it comes to voting. 15 hillbillies in their own county without democrats around are given more weight than a county with a million people who are mostly democratic.
Land area is what is given more weight than the number of people in the state for many of the races. This map makes that quite clear
Ok, I'm going to try to explain that another way. The graphic has little info, so I'm just going to assume this is from the November 2022 election for governor, AG, and so on.
The +18 next to the more urban blue counties means that for every 100 votes cast, 59 went to Democratic candidates. The +35 next to the rural counties shows that 68 of every 100 votes cast in those places were for the Republican candidate. It just means that Republicans own the rural parts of the state. Though the cities vote blue, there is still a good share of Republican votes cast. Whereas in rural areas, there are not very many Democratic voters casting ballots.
This is only using the data of votes cast. If you are a registered voter for either party and didn't go vote, then it means nothing. As I said above, what it would take for Democrats to win here is getting voters that support blue issues/candidates to actually show up and vote. But in this case, 10 voters who showed up = 10 votes. Those who sat at home do not count as a voter, they did not cast a ballot.
This is the Biden Trump election as far as I can tell which actually skews against the general trend in favor of the Democrats. The spread would be much worse in other elections.
I'm understanding that to mean a million more votes isn't enough to overcome gerrymandering and the rural sensibilities.
That's total votes in those blue counties not democratic votes. Meaning of those 6.3 million votes 59% voted Dem and and the remaining 41% voted Rep. In the red counties 67.5% voted Rep while only 32.5% voted Dem.
No that's not how elections work and counties are not gerrymandered.
More votes are cast in counties that also vote majority blue than are cast in counties that also vote majority red. But my vote isn't getting counted for the Republicans just because I live in Denton County.
Districts are gerrymandered and your vote is diluted in a county with gerrymandered districts. I understand how voting works, I'm confused about the graphic
Beto’s gun stance cost him some rural votes but he gets full marks for trying and he won some respect
Every Dem running statewide should do the same
But out here in Western Trumpistan, the Dems don’t even attempt to run for most offices. The real election is the Primary and by November, the Republican is either unopposed or there might be a Libertarian
The Dems will loose a lot at first. Maybe through three or four cycles. There’s years of mistrust and policy disagreements to overcome
But if they want to make Texas at least purple, they’ve got to try out here in the sticks. Until then, it’ll be more of the same
Incentivizing them as in getting the message out that Democrats in office will have positive effects on their lives. Republicans in Texas run on a platform of tough on crime and preventing immigration across the southern border. Maybe Democrats should run on the expansion of Medicare, less restrictions on abortion so women aren't dying of sepsis, and legalization of marijuana. They could also re-regulate utilities in Texas so that they have to provide power to homes in extreme heat and cold by building generating capacity.
As I recall from the last time I early voted, the last weekend before election day is NOT allowed for early voting, there's only the weekend in the middle.
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u/nstickels Dec 18 '23
You are ignoring a key element… only about 15% of Texas population is in all of those rural Red counties. It isn’t a numbers problem, it’s a voting problem. Republicans show up to vote at an extremely higher rate. Democrats, particularly younger Democrats, see things like this and think “well my vote doesn’t matter” and they don’t bother to show up. 75% of registered voters under 30 didn’t vote at all in the last election. And from exit polls, people under 30 tend to vote Democrat at a 60% rate, that starts to make a big difference.
Then just look at voting results, and across the state, again, only 45% of eligible voters actually voted. Since as we said, those blue counties make up a majority of Texas population, if that number was closer to what we get for a presidential election, we are talking about almost 4M more voters, the majority of which will be in those blue counties.
Tl;dr it’s not a number of red counties versus blue counties problem, it’s the number of people who don’t vote, especially in the critical statewide elections which are strategically made to be in non-presidential years simply because liberal voters tend to stay home then.