There, two first-time candidates squared off over a vacated GOP seat in a district that was estimated R+8; Kopser (Dem) ended up 3% behind. That red blob is the Texas Hill Country, which has about as much to do with Austin as Stockton, CA does with SF. But the tactic worked.
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Or take TX-25, where first-time candidate Julie Oliver (my story starts in her campaign office) tried to overcome a R+11 disadvantage. Similar story: urban Austin diluted by rural areas stretching practically to Dallas. She finished down by 8%.pic.twitter.com/gwZgIsoSvF
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Surely there must be Dem voters that can't be topologically diluted somehow., right? Indeed, there are. That's TX-35, a planned concession to the Dems, and Austin's only blue district. That tendril connecting the blue areas runs along Highway 35, and is mostly unpopulated.pic.twitter.com/FS8ukIuXIk
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This is the gerrymanderer's playbook: dilute the opposition's voters *just* enough to win by a healthy 10%, then concede a district where they win by a landslide, wasting as few supporters as possible. TX-35 was won by Dems by 45%(!). All those Dem voters were essentially wasted.
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A newly-revitalized Texas Dem party was routed in the House: not a single district on the DCCC 'red to blue' flip list went Dem. The races finished much tighter than predicted though, with TX-23 being lost by only 300 votes. What's this mean for a possible 'blue Texas'?
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The gerrymanderer faces two problems: 1. Margin of victory in even rigged districts tends to be low, as you want to spend as few voters to win as possible. That means if there's a statewide bump in your opposition, all your districts start flipping at once, like dominoes.
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2. Texas has a booming economy, and last year was the fastest growing state in the US. Gerrymandering is a 'fire-and-forget' tactic that can only get updated in post-census redistricting. Toward the end of that 10-year cycle, the districts are off, and an overthrow is possible.
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The Dems have one last shot in 2020 to seize control of the state legislature and other statewide offices to control the post-2020 redistricting. If they don't pull it off, the GOP will redraw the map, and TX will be frozen red for another decade. The stakes are high.
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This isn't mere hyperbole: the red Texas we take for granted was largely the result of back-to-back redistricting ploys by the GOP, first by DeLay in 2000, and then a Karl-Rove-inspired effort in 2010. Who draws the map, holds the territory, whatever the shifting demographics.
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The other piece of the TX political puzzle is voter registration and turnout. "Texas isn't a red state, it's a non-voting state," said more than one Dem official. That's at least partly true, as voting in Texas is hard, and kept so by state officials.https://www.wired.com/story/flipping-texas-elections-voter-registration-tech/ …
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The key to Dem victory in Texas (and other sunbelt states like FL or GA) is voter registration and turnout. The demographics of the ballots in the box do not reflect the demographics of the state, and fighting to maintain or remove that discrepancy is the focus of each party.
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Replying to @antoniogm
Yes! Both parties are “discrepant” (meaning they like the confusion because they are the opposite sides of the same coin.”
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