Vice President Kamala Harris will not be able to translate the growing enthusiasm for her White House bid into being able to flip Texas, experts have said.
Harris, the Democratic 2024 nominee, appeared in Texas three times in July, in both an administrative role and as part of campaign events for her White House bid which has seen her overtake Donald Trump nationally as the current overall front-runner.
The Lone Star State is certainly not considered a swing state, having voted for a Republican candidate in the previous 11 elections, including for Trump in 2016 and 2020. President Joe Biden, however, did narrow the gap in Texas to just 5.6 points, the closest presidential race in the state since 1996.
Despite the long history of backing Republicans in presidential, senate and governor races, there have been continuing suggestions that Texas could be on the verge of an unprecedented switch in voter dynamic.
Not only did Biden close the presidential gap in 2020, but former Texas Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke was only narrowly beaten by incumbent Republican Ted Cruz in the 2018 Senate race.
Polls have also indicated that Cruz could have another tight reelection fight this year against Representative Colin Allred, who is hoping to be the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Texas state since 1988.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in Dallas on July 10, 2024. The vice president has made multiple trips to the Republican stronghold.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, a professor of American politics at the University of North Texas, suggested that even Harris’ momentum and a close high-profile state level race doesn’t necessarily mean the vice president will be competitive in Texas.
“I do not think that Texas will be in play. At all,” Eshbaugh-Soha told Newsweek.
“This does not mean that Harris will avoid Texas. She will visit, to raise money and generate some exposure for herself and her campaign,” he added. “There is nothing in the mix that indicates future performance will be any different from past performance; I don’t see anything that may shake up the presidential vote in Texas.”
Eshbaugh-Soha said that one issue which could harm Harris is that voters in Texas may still associate her with the record breaking levels of illegal migrant crossings seen at the border during the Biden administration.
Harris was personally tasked by Biden to find a solution for illegal border crossings at the southern border in January 2021. Trump and other Republican figures are already using Harris’ record on illegal migration to suggest she is unfit to be president.
“Harris to improve vote share in Texas, she has to nullify the border issue. About half Texas voters think the border is a crisis,” Eshbaugh-Soha said. “If Texas voters assign any blame on the border to the Biden Administration, and I suspect they do, then Harris has to work around this first.
“I think the Harris campaign has a good strategy:tout the immigration bill that Trump torpedoed earlier this year, and use that as a framework for her immigration policy. Instead of trying to fend off attacks related to the border over the past few years, she can go on the offensive, and basically give the voters a blueprint of specifics that she supports, thinks that will solve the problem, and let the voters decide.”
There have been continuing suggestions that Texas could be on the verge of an unprecedented switch in voter dynamic.
Photo Illustration by Newsweek/Getty Images
Kimi Lynn King, a University of North Texas political science professor, said that while Harris in enjoying a “bump” in her White House bid, it is unclear how that will help shift the narrative in Texas, a state where “pundits have been predicting since 2006 that there was going to be a purple wave.”
“In 2022, up and down the statewide ballot, solid red candidates like Governor [Greg] Abbott and indicted and impeached, but not convicted, Attorney General Ken Paxton enjoyed double-digit victories over Democrats,” King told Newsweek.
Mark Jones, professor of political science and fellow in political science at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Texas, added: “At the present time, while Harris is likely to make the race more competitive than it would have been had Biden been the Democratic nominee, I don’t see Harris doing much better than Biden did in 2020, and thus a Trump victory in the mid-to-high single digits is the most likely scenario today.”
According to forecasters Race to the White House, Trump has an average lead over Harris in Texas of nearly 12 percentage points.
The last Democratic presidential candidate to win in Texas was Jimmy Carter in 1976. The last Democratic senate win was Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 and the last Democrat to win the governor’s mansion was Ann Richards in 1990.