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Voting efforts hampered by the coronavirus pandemic and an 11-hour electoral roll for well-funded Republicans thwarted the ambitions of a blue wave in Texas during the 2020 election, according to a new autopsy that state Democrats shared with the Guardian.
“Most Texans, if they were at the polls, would vote for Democrats. The problem is that Republicans are more likely to attend, ”said Hudson Cavanagh, the Texas Democratic Party’s director of data science, author of the post-election report.
Texas generated an exaggerated buzz last year, when an increase in initial votes made much of the country wonder if its 38 votes at the electoral college were finally up for grabs. Still, former President Donald Trump still triumphed by more than a five-point margin – a much more fierce presidential race than any other in recent years, but one that has strengthened Republicans as the state’s dominant party.
Democrats are now blaming last fall’s defeat mainly on programmatic difficulties, which allowed Republicans to beat them in voting operations. “Texas is still the next frontier,” said Abhi Rahman, director of communications for the Texas Democrats.
Despite record attendance in 2020, Texas ranked 44th out of 50 states in terms of ballots counted as a proportion of the total eligible population, according to the United States Elections Project. The participation of voters in Upper Asia marked “a major change”, but still, “the electorate was whiter than projected,” noted Cavanagh in his analysis.
Latinos – who are considered an important demographic to move Texas to the left – also eclipsed participation projections. But Latin Republicans voted for a higher rate than Latin Democrats, and this differential attendance created a widely false impression that Democrats were losing ground with one of their most crucial blocks, often grouped together as a monolith.
An exception was the Rio Grande Valley, a typically Democratic stronghold where Latinos did in fact gravitate more to Trump at the top of the list.
While “Latin voters continue to strongly support Democrats,” the party must “empower Latin voices at the ballot box,” wrote Cavanagh in his report.
In addition to Texas’s reputation as a voter suppression state – based on voter identification requirements, a difficult registration process, restrictions on ballot papers and other barriers – Covid-19 added yet another obstacle for Texas voters in 2020. Polling stations closed because of infected workers, while long lines of constituents who were not required to wear masks threatened exposure to the virus.
“It took a lot of bravery for many of these Democrats who understood the risk that, you know, they were putting themselves up to vote,” Cavanagh told the Guardian. “I am very proud of the people who did it, frankly.”
In the midst of the public health crisis, Texas Democrats decided not to knock on doors for voters to come face to face, because “even one life lost is too much,” said Cavanagh. Republicans, on the other hand, connected with voters personally, a clear advantage in one of the few states where residents are still unable to register to vote online.
In the last few months leading up to the election, huge pressure from Republicans to register new voters ended the gradual advantage that Democrats had been gaining for years, especially considering that almost all new Republican registrations had turned into net votes.
“Their willingness to put people at risk to win the election, you know, made it very difficult for us to keep up,” said Cavanagh.
As Democrats turned to online registration campaigns and telephone banking, they spent a lot of time talking to trusted party members who would have voted independently. Likewise, the lack of contact information for young Texans in the countryside – as well as people of color – and the inability to paint made it difficult to contact voters who were less likely to attend.
Estimates indicate that there are still more than 2 million unregistered Democratic voters in the state, and Cavanagh said the party needs to focus on registering them and then building relationships to get to the polls.
“We know this is how Democrats win across the country,” he said. “We look people in the eye, tell them our values, say what we believe in and that’s how we make people show up.”