What if Texas goes blue?

November is coming fast. Election Day is bearing down on us like a chore, and we must check off our list. While the focus is on battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a rising swing state — Texas — could decide both the presidency and the Senate.

What if Texas goes blue? What if Kamla Harris wins the White House and Democrats win the Senate? Donald Trump and his supporters already refused to accept the results of an election where he won ruby red Texas; what do you think he and his supporters will say about an election where the Lone Star State turns left?

Texas has been trending blue for a decade due to a shift in business and population. From 2009 to 2021, more companies (117) moved to Texas than any other state, most of which came from deep blue California. As a result, Texas gained two additional congressional seats (moving from 36 to 38) after the 2020 census, while California lost two. The population shift has continued; from 2020 to 2021, Texas’s population grew more than any other state.

While Texas has gone red in every presidential election since 1980, the margin of victory has declined since 2012, going from 15.8 percent to 9.1 percent in 2016 and to 5.8 percent in 2020. Voter turnout from 2016 to 2020 increased in Texas by 25.8 percent, and Trump received more votes in 2020 than in 2016, but a smaller share. Meanwhile, Democrats’ share increased from 43.2 percent to 46.5 percent. Suggesting Republicans are not losing support but “that most new Texas voters are more…  Read more likely to vote Democrat” makes sense because many of the new voters came from California.