Shifting demographics and trends in Texas could make for big electoral changes in 2020 and beyond

This week, more than 120 credit union leaders gathered for the two-day Texas Governmental Affairs Conference in Austin.

Last night, Texas Tribune founder and CEO Evan Smith gave a rousing presentation to attendees on the state of politics in Texas. He said his publication is bipartisan and doesn’t tell people what to think, but he does tell people to think and to be part of the conversation. 

Smith compared voter turnout in 2018 to previous midterms and presidential election years, noting the changing demographics, voting patterns across the state, and the surprising turnabout that occurred last November with Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s Senate bid against Republican Ted Cruz—a race O’Rourke narrowly lost.

Smith thinks O’Rourke was the most charismatic Democrat in the race, and the most promising candidate on the Democratic side since Gov. Ann Richards in the late ‘80s.

Smith said rural communities still decide the outcome of elections in Texas, but that’s changing. Voter turnout is highest in presidential election years, but the 2018 midterms were unique in that the turnout was almost as high as the 2016 election cycle, and total votes cast were more than the total votes cast in the 2012 presidential election.

Smith attributes the high turnout to not only O’Rourke, but also angry voters (women, people of color, and young people) who were highly motivated to vote against President Donald Trump, whose name wasn’t officially on the ballot.

While better at the federal level, Texas demographics aren’t currently reflected in the state legislature, which is still dominated by white male Republicans, Smith said. But the balance of diversity among Texans is changing. In 2018, women in all categories migrated away from the Republican party—urban, suburban, and even “non-college educated”—and by a large margin voted Democratic.

Between the 2014 midterm and the 2018 midterm, Hispanic voters jumped by 75 percent. In 2018, early voting by Millennials in Texas increased by 508 percent. And in 2020, Smith predicts that, for the first time ever, one in three voters will be under 30.

The state of politics and viewpoints on issues are shifting, and Smith feels it’s possible that in two years, the Democrats could even retake control of the Texas House and speakership, provided they do everything right.

Smith gave amusing commentary about the new House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, versus the previous speaker Joe Strauss. He called Bonnen a tough conservative who’s been in the legislature half his life and said, "Joe Strauss showed up to a knife fight with a butter knife, and Dennis Bonnen showed up with that sword from Kill Bill."

Today, credit union leaders at the Texas GAC will spend the morning listening to several guest legislators and Texas Credit Union Commissioner John Kolhoff. They’ll round things out with a legislative briefing, followed by an afternoon of in-person visits to legislators at the Capitol.