Going back as far as 2008, I can remember Democrats and various media figures/pundits confidently predicting that sooner rather than later Texas was going to flip to blue, perhaps as soon as 2012 or 2016.
That (wishful) thinking was due to a few things: Barack Obama doing significantly better in Texas in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000, a Hispanic population that was getting bigger, “progressive” transplants that were moving to the Lone Star State, and the fact that in 2008 some red states including North Carolina turned blue.
“Blue Texas” (“Blexas”) didn’t happen in 2012 nor 2016. But perhaps inspired by Beto O’Rourke’s failed but close campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, Democrats gave it a go again in Texas in 2020, spending seven figures to flip it to Joe Biden and doubling down on statewide voter registration efforts only to…
