Is Texas a battleground state?
Hardly.
The vast majority of races on November’s Texas ballots are highly predictable, offer little to no competition and won’t change the state’s political dynamic.
Republicans have controlled statewide politics for nearly 30 years. And though the margin of GOP statewide wins has decreased considerably since the high-water mark of 2014, odds are the party will maintain its control.
“The likelihood is that a presidential year would be the biggest boon for Democrats, but that has been muted by the kind of accelerated interest among Republicans,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
Rottinghaus said demographic shifts have helped Democrats become more competitive in statewide races, but the long-predicted move to swing state status hasn’t been realized.
“That’s the biggest quandary that the Democrats face,” Rottinghaus said. “Demographics are moving in their direction, which is on paper positive, but the actual outcomes in voting haven’t gone their way.”
A battleground is a distinct classification – a place where the Republican and the Democratic candidates have a chance to capture the state’s electoral votes. In this year’s election, there are only seven – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.
Some states are not presidential battlegrounds but have competitive down-ballot or midterm races. They also have recent histories of electing leaders from both parties.
Even if you squint hard, Texas has trouble meeting either qualification.
Still, there are compelling storylines to follow.
Former President Donald Trump is favored to beat Kamala Harris in Texas, though most analysts expect a margin of victory in single digits. In 2020 Trump bested Joe Biden in Texas by 5.5 points. Robust turnout for the presidential race could produce coattails that impact down-ballot races for both parties.
In addition, Texas elections usually offer a race that tests the state of Lone Star politics. This cycle it’s the Senate showdown between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas.
Cruz has a moderate lead in polls and is favored to win. If Allred breaks through, it would shake the state’s political landscape and have national repercussions, as both parties are vying to control the U.S. Senate.
Statewide races tell only part of the Texas political saga.
Democrats wield considerable power in the urban centers and have made inroads in some suburban areas. Even so, Republicans maintain firm control of the Texas House and Senate.
Though Democrats have closed the statewide gap from Greg Abbott’s 20-point drubbing of Wendy Davis in the 2014 race for governor, the party appears no closer to taking control of the Texas Legislature. Democrats’ best chance came in 2008, when excitement over Barack Obama’s candidacy propelled the party to within two seats of controlling the Texas House.
In November, it’s highly unlikely Democrats can make significant gains, much less take control, in the House – where Republicans hold a 86-63 advantage with one vacancy. The Senate is also out of reach, with Republicans holding a 19-12 majority.
The good news for Democrats is that they won’t lose much ground, either. In 2021 Texas lawmakers, led by the Republicans in charge, redrew state legislative and congressional boundaries to protect most incumbents from both parties.
They made sure that there were almost no swing districts in Texas and that the political balance of power remained status quo.
Looking ahead to the 2025 legislative session, Republicans are poised to push through a conservative agenda on an array of issues, including private school vouchers.
For decades Texas politics has been defined by a familiar pendulum that doesn’t quite make it to the other side. At the beginning of a decade, boundaries are drawn to fortify GOP majorities and protect most Democratic incumbents.
During the first couple of election cycles under the new districts, there are few highly competitive races and the power dynamic remains stagnant. By the middle of the decade, particularly in urban and some suburban areas, demographic shifts made some legislative races more competitive for Democrats, so they made some gains.
Consider the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats flipped 12 GOP-held seats in the Texas House – 10 in the Dallas area.
Collin County Republican Reps. Jeff Leach and Matt Shaheen, both of Plano, won races decided by a handful of voters. Dallas County Republican Reps. Angie Chen Button of Garland and Morgan Meyer of University Park were also in tight contests.
That same year, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, came within 2.6 percentage points of beating Cruz, which provided coattails that helped some Democrats win legislative and congressional seats, including Allred’s win over Republican Pete Sessions in Dallas-anchored District 32.
Democrats believed they were poised to take the Texas House in the next election, and Republicans took the threat seriously.
In 2020 a more focused GOP maintained control of the Texas House and Senate, which gave them the opportunity to redraw legislative boundaries and fortify the districts that had become vulnerable over the previous decade.
The result: Seats held by Leach, Shaheen, Button and Meyer – in districts that were trending Democratic – became more favorable to the incumbents.
It’s a similar refrain across the state and a core reason why November doesn’t feature many close state legislative races.
No congressional races are considered highly competitive, including in North Texas.
For most of the past 30 years, the question has been: How long will GOP dominance last?
The prediction has been that demographic shifts will help Democrats, particularly with the emergence of Latino voters. But the shift has not propelled Democrats to significant victories, and Republicans have wooed Latinos with success in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley.
“This vote has been traditionally favoring Democrats because of longstanding ties, but as those ties atrophy, you’re starting to see a newer generation of Latinos support Republican politicians,” Rottinghaus said.
A bigger challenge may be money and message. While candidates in smaller states can run cost-effective campaigns with localized messages, Texas is a behemoth with costly media markets.
Texas Democrats, Rottinghaus said, are getting trapped in national narratives that prevent them from connecting to voters as Texans, not generic national Democrats.
“Texas politics is not national politics,” Rottinghaus said. “It’s harder for Democrats to carve out a unique position that might appeal to voters. Instead, they’re forced to defend what national Democrats are doing, and that might look too liberal for where most Texans are.”
The best way to describe Texas is a state where Republicans control statewide politics but Democrats have become more competitive. Some Democrats have focused on strengthening the urban strongholds, which could pay dividends in a state where Republicans are running up the score in the rural areas they control.
Unless Democrats can strike an unexpected blow, battleground status for Texas is still a dream deferred.