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Meh, the last time a candidate’s only claim to fame was fundraising accomplishments, it was Bernie. Cruz is winning.
O'Rourke stomps Cruz in latest round of fundraising
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/02...raising-texas/
Meh, the last time a candidate’s only claim to fame was fundraising accomplishments, it was Bernie. Cruz is winning.
Probably. Cruz is sign of what a hole TX is.
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/22/tex...n-republicans/On Tuesday, 51,249 Texans appeared to vote in primaries in 15 of the state's largest counties, according to the Dallas Morning News. That number is only slightly below the 55,931 who turned out on the first day of early voting in the 2016 presidential primaries. Though a drop is to be expected when comparing presidential primaries to midterm primaries, what's notable is that Texas saw a steep rise in turnout compared to the 2014 midterm elections, when only 38,441 Texans turned out to vote during the first day of early voting.
This major increase in voter turnout seemed to be predominantly due to heightened enthusiasm among Democrats. Although Republicans only saw a 16 percent increase in their first-day early voting turnout since the 2014 midterm elections, Democrats saw an increase of 51 percent.
Primary don't mean much, other than a whiff of what is to come.Across the state's 15 largest counties, Democratic turnout is up over the first two days of voting, compared with 2014, according to numbers collected by the Texas Secretary of State's Office.
Among all voters who've cast ballots so far, both in person and by mail, Democrats have a small lead, with 76,523 people taking part in the Democratic primary, compared with 69,362 Republicans. Compared with the last midterm election, however, those numbers signal a huge swing. In 2014, at the end of the second day of early voting in the primary, 75,764 voters had participated in the GOP primary, compared with 44,463 who'd cast ballots in the Democratic primary.
http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/t...-vote-10402287
Rural areas will reverse some of the lead in the cities, but still. I am guardedly optimistic.
Senate Key Race alert: Texas is no longer Solid Republican
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/polit...can/index.html
This is just the ing primary, .Texas Democrats have outpaced their Republican counterparts in early voting for the March 6 primary, and it has people like Gov. Greg Abbott sounding worried.
In deep red Texas, voters in the 15 largest counties cast more than 184,000 votes in the Democratic primary and more than 166,000 in the Republican primary, according to tallies of in-person voters through Monday.
November will be Texas Democrats first real chance to give Trump the middle finger.
Suck.
It.
Revolt of the librarians
Theda Skocpol’s new work on anti-Trump activists
New findings from a far-sighted political scientist
....
In fact, Ms Skocpol and Ms Putnam find that the new activists are a rather moderate bunch. Unlike Momentum, the movement that supports Labour's Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, they do not want to sweep away capitalism and replace it with something more just. They are disproportionately female: about 70% of the participants and most of the leadership of local Indivisible outposts are women, according to the authors. "The metropolitan advocates to whom the national media turn to explain the 'newly energised grassroots' at times exaggerate the left-progressive focus of the activists underway and overestimate their own importance in coordinating it," Ms Skocpol and Ms Putnam write. "This will not look like a far-left reinvention of Tea Partiers or a continuation of Bernie 2016. It will look like retired librarians rolling their eyes at the present state of affairs, and then taking charge." Any political movement that promises to give more power to librarians is OK with your blogger.
One result of all this, the authors predict, is a speeding up of the renewal in the Democratic Party. In a two-party system, opposition parties tend to eventually renew themselves while out of power. But this process can take a really long time. When President Barack Obama left office, the Democrats were by some estimates at their lowest ebb in state politics since the 1920s. "At the current pace, it seems likely that the pop-up leaders and grassroots groups of 2017 will, by 2019, have repopulated the local layer of the Democratic Party in much of the country," the authors reckon. If that were to happen, it would be an extraordinarily speedy turnaround. The next step is for this movement to find a leader that it can get behind, too.
https://www.economist.com/blogs/demo...olt-librarians
------------------------
BOOM.
Mirrors what I have been seeing first-hand, from a very credible source.
A moderate wave of sensible women running for office, which I think is pretty cool.
Early vote totals for Texas’s midterm election primaries are looking good for Democrats, who are showing extremely high levels of enthusiasm. Democratic turnout has increased by 90 percent compared to the 2014 midterms and is even above the 2016 presidential election year levels. Republican early voter turnout is up by 17 percent from 2014 but still lagging behind 2016 turnout.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...voting-turnout
Long way to November, but still.More than 602,000 voters had cast ballots in the state’s largest counties in either the Democratic or Republican primaries through Wednesday. That does not count Thursday’s totals that were not available late Thursday, or Friday’s, when polls will again be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Four years ago, fewer than 600,000 people voted in the entire early voting season.
Harris County has also seen a new record. More than 116,000 people have voted early or by mail already with two days remaining to add to that total. Four years ago, just 105,508 people in Harris voted during the entire early voting period.
Democrats represent a major reason for the records and have been out-voting Republicans since the start of early voting on Feb. 20. There have been 25,000 more Democratic ballots than Republicans have cast. That is a big change from the last two gubernatorial election cycles when Republicans dramatically outvoted Democrats in the primaries by well over 100,000 in each year.
It would be cool to see that s bag Cruz voted out, and Beto is a terrific candidate, but I remain pessimistic.
The consequences of this disparity probably won’t end with the primary election on March 6. Based on previous elections, we know that increased Democratic participation in the primaries means greater Democratic turnout in the general election. The same isn’t true for Republican voters, who have a record of steady turnout regardless of primary participation.
So where is this Democratic wave coming from?
Surges in early voting can usually be attributed to interest among heavily partisan voters, but the turnout this cycle points to an interesting trend. More than half the voters who have cast ballots in the Democratic primary in Harris County have little to no history of voting in other Democratic primaries. That’s not to say these voters are new to the process. Rather, they’re just voters who skip the primary and turn out in the general election.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opi...s-12718475.php
Dunno. CNN shifted the race from "GOP lock" to "likely GOP".
Once the primary settles out and the general gets underway, the game is afoot, and we will have a better idea.
Oroarke is pushing hard in places that Texas Senatorial candidates rarely go, i.e. everywhere. Senator is a statewide office, so even votes in places that normally lean heavily GOP count. Get people to turn out there, and that nullifies to some extent the normal GOP advantage in rural areas.
I am going to do more blockwalks, phone banks, and I will probably take the day off to drive fellow Democrats to the polls.
Even so, I would agree with CNN's assessment. More likely than not Cruz will be re-elected, but that margin is going to be narrow. Two more years of aging white conservatives dying off, Trump ing up, and new young progressives showing up to vote, and Texas will be purple.
yep, Beto has out-raised Krazy this year, but Krazy already had some $Ms in reserve.
An apparently truly progressive Dem Senator from TX? IBIWISI
Lmao turning Texas blue
It's close than you seem to think.
As I have already said, 2018 is still a bit early, but Dems have a lot of upside on turnout, given historically low turnout rates. About the same number of Republicans vote every time, no matter what election/primary is in the offing.
If Democrats in Texas voted at the same rates that Republicans do, it would be blue already.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/artic...ing-democraticAccording to the Pew Research Center, the number of of Hispanics eligible to vote has increased from 19 million in 2008 to 27 million today, and is increasing by about 1 million every year. Growth is expected to continue at this pace for decades, leaving many of the states mentioned above with a plurality or even majority of voters who are Hispanic. Today, at slightly more than 28 percent, Texas has the second highest share of eligible voters who are Hispanic of any state in the nation, and is the only state with a sizable Hispanic population that isn't blue or purple. And its share of Hispanic voters is far higher than many of the states that have already drifted towards the Democrats, and even higher than deep-blue California.
Young people of all races are remaining liberal, while older conservatives die off.But another demographic trend that is bringing dramatic change to American politics should also concern Republicans about the future of Texas – the rise of the millennials. Since 2008, the number of voting age millennials in America has increased from 35 million to 70 million. To put this in perspective, the average Congressional district now has 160,000 millennials, with 80,000 of them having turned voting age since Barack Obama was elected president. Like Hispanics, millennials have been voting about two to one Democratic. Assuming a 50 percent turnout rate, these new voters represent 6 million net new votes for Democrats since the 2008 election, an amount equal to about 10 percent of Obama's 2012 vote and a million more votes than Obama's margin over Romney. This is no small thing.
(shrugs)
Change happens. Not sure why well-do ented demographic trends surprise you. Give it another couple of years. The GOP is on an unsustainable death spiral in Texas.
Texas has a lot of millennials. By the 2018 election, Texas will have the fourth highest percentage of millennials of any state in the country, and a higher percentage than any large or medium sized state. Coupled with the growth of the Hispanic community in Texas, this millennial surge has created dramatic demographic change and added millions more Democratic voters. In that new CBS/YouGov poll, Trump was only getting 27 percent with voters aged 18 to 29 – in Texas!
Remarkably, Texas has a higher percentage of both millennials and Hispanics today than California, suggesting that with a significant investment in the coming years Texas could indeed follow California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and now Arizona from red to blue.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/0...eager-to-vote/Based solely on demographic analyses of Texas, it has looked like the Democrats might be compe ive in the presidential election by 2024 and perhaps have an outright advantage by 2028. Those estimates don’t take into account the possibility that racial, ethnic or gender groups might change their voting preferences. If whites vote even more heavily Republican or Latinos become more like swing voters, then Texas may remain reliably red for a longer period of time. But if the reverse happens, or if, say, white women move sharply away from the GOP in reaction to school shootings and the #MeToo movement, then Texas could be compe ive in 2020.
Seems to track the data I have seen elsewhere.
I question two basic assumptions you guys are making.
1) hispanics are automatically democrats.
2) liberal political inclination of milleniums will be cast in stone as they age, get real jobs, have families, and pay taxes. The conservative baby boomers you guys hate were liberal as in the 60s and 70s. Assuming that was an abberation is not necessarily logical.
Btw, I despise cruz and Abbott. I think Texas will move towards the center politically as time passes but not jump off the liberal cliff.
When I did early voting yesterday the turnout was 99% Democrat. But I'm hesitant to assume anything from that. Republican disinterest in the primary doesn't necessarily mean disinterest in the election.
On #2 I think you have to differentiate Reagan/Bush conservatism with Trump/Abbott conservatism. While real world job experience may push someone towards fiscal conservatism (and moral conservatism to some extent when they start families), I don't see it leading to ethno-nationalistic paranoia so much.
I somewhat agree but think Trump, Abbott, Cruz etc. are temporary abberations. I think there will be a moderating move towards the center but not a dramatic pendulum swing to the left.
Actually, despite the nuttiness Trump is hardly a right wing conservative.
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