Texas is up first on the list of first looks at redistricting.  This look at Texas will feature some issues that are going to be recurring throughout this discussion and one issue that will impact Texas the most but might come into play in some other states.

The first issue is that we do not yet have the actual precinct and block level counts from the 2020 census.  That means that this first look is based on the 2019 estimates.  And, of course, estimates are not necessarily exact (as the state level numbers for 2020 showed).  While the far right is upset about the national numbers and want to raise sinister suggestions that something happened behind the scenes to fudge the real numbers, it is equally likely that the previous administration was fudging the numbers in the estimates.  What is most likely is that certain steps by red state governments and anti-government rhetoric led to an undercount of certain groups in red states in 2020 when the Trump Administration was running the Census.  So, we have to expect that there will be some unexpected deviations within states when we get the numbers in November.

The second issue is the Donald Trump had a big impact on voters.  There are various ways to measure partisan lean in a state.  Most involve taking a composite of recent state-wide elections.  The software that I am using is currently based on the 2012 through 2016 elections.  In Texas, in 2012, both Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Mitt Romney carried the state by around 16%.  In 2014, Senator Cornyn carried the state by about 27% and other Republicans were winning by around a 22% margin.  In 2016, Donald Trump won by around  9%.   In 2018, however, Senator Cruz only won by 2%.  While Governor Greg Abbott won by around 13% with the other state-wide Republicans ranging between 3% and 11%.  Finally, in 2020, President Trump only won by 6% and Senator Cornyn won by around 10%.   In other words, what my software is showing as a 60-40 state based on the 2012-16 results is actually something more like a 54-46 state.  And a good chunk of that swing was in suburban districts which probably went from something like 60-40 to very close to 50-50.  Overall, there were three congressional districts (Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth) in which the Republican House candidate beat the 2012-16 Republican composite numbers in their district, and in some districts the Republican underperformed by around 10%. Continue Reading...