This seems odd to me, as well...if Texas is in play...and many,including Ted Cruz believe that it is..surely it would be worth some energy? I get the Trump camp thinking that it would be a waste of money to try to convince the already convinced..even if they are wrong..but Biden should be eager to test the new diverse electorate that Texas has.
"Though the state isn’t essential to a Biden victory, Democrats have been more aggressive here. Mr. Biden is dispatching his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, to Texas on Friday, and Democrats have also planned a multicity bus tour across the state. A pair of Democratic billionaires, Dustin Moskovitz and Michael R. Bloomberg, have separately poured money into the state at the 11th hour.
Senator John Cornyn, a Republican facing his own difficult race against M.J. Hegar, said Wednesday that “the thing that worries me the most” is the Democrats’ late spending, predicting that he would be “outspent by more than 2-to-1.”
The stakes here are, well, Texas-sized.
A Biden win would doom Mr. Trump’s chances for re-election. More significantly, it would herald the arrival of a formidable multiracial Democratic coalition in the country’s largest red state. That would hand the Democrats an electoral upper hand nationwide and all but block Republicans from the White House until they improve their fortunes with college-educated white voters, younger people and minorities.
It’s those demographics that are imperiling Mr. Trump in Texas.
Recent polls, soaring early vote participation in the state’s most populous counties, and more than 50 interviews with Texans in three pivotal regions point to an increasingly competitive race because of a spike in turnout by an electorate that is diverse, loathes the president and makes a mockery of his pistols-and-petroleum stereotype of the state.
The pandemic has slowed the Texas economy, the top selling point for its politicians and the engine for the state’s population growth, with unemployment rising from 6.8 percent in August to 8.3 percent in September. Covid-19 cases are rising; over the past week, there have been more than 6,300 new cases per day on average, an increase of 43 percent from the average two weeks earlier.
With two days left of early voting, turnout in Texas has nearly exceeded the total number of votes cast in the state in the 2016 election. Voters under 30 have showed up in historic numbers, with over 904,000 of them already casting ballots (only 1.1 million such young Texans voted in all of 2016). College-educated white voters and Asian-Americans have turned out in even larger numbers, with both groups casting more ballots than they did four years ago, according to the Democratic group TargetSmart.
While Democrats were infuriated with the decision by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to limit the number of drop boxes for absentee ballots to one per county, they believe his decision to extend early voting from two to three weeks and to push local elections from the spring to November’s ballot has bolstered their turnout efforts.
Participation has been particularly high in the metropolitan areas — and not just the biggest cities, but also in booming exurban counties, where a diverse new mix of voters is shattering turnout records in the bedroom communities of Dallas, Austin and Houston.
“It is a competitive state, meaning a Democrat can now win statewide,” acknowledged Steve Munisteri, a former chairman of the Texas Republican Party, noting that about 10 million people had moved to the state in the last 20 years. “We’ve had the equivalent of two medium-sized states move in.”"
"Though the state isn’t essential to a Biden victory, Democrats have been more aggressive here. Mr. Biden is dispatching his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, to Texas on Friday, and Democrats have also planned a multicity bus tour across the state. A pair of Democratic billionaires, Dustin Moskovitz and Michael R. Bloomberg, have separately poured money into the state at the 11th hour.
Senator John Cornyn, a Republican facing his own difficult race against M.J. Hegar, said Wednesday that “the thing that worries me the most” is the Democrats’ late spending, predicting that he would be “outspent by more than 2-to-1.”
The stakes here are, well, Texas-sized.
A Biden win would doom Mr. Trump’s chances for re-election. More significantly, it would herald the arrival of a formidable multiracial Democratic coalition in the country’s largest red state. That would hand the Democrats an electoral upper hand nationwide and all but block Republicans from the White House until they improve their fortunes with college-educated white voters, younger people and minorities.
It’s those demographics that are imperiling Mr. Trump in Texas.
Recent polls, soaring early vote participation in the state’s most populous counties, and more than 50 interviews with Texans in three pivotal regions point to an increasingly competitive race because of a spike in turnout by an electorate that is diverse, loathes the president and makes a mockery of his pistols-and-petroleum stereotype of the state.
The pandemic has slowed the Texas economy, the top selling point for its politicians and the engine for the state’s population growth, with unemployment rising from 6.8 percent in August to 8.3 percent in September. Covid-19 cases are rising; over the past week, there have been more than 6,300 new cases per day on average, an increase of 43 percent from the average two weeks earlier.
With two days left of early voting, turnout in Texas has nearly exceeded the total number of votes cast in the state in the 2016 election. Voters under 30 have showed up in historic numbers, with over 904,000 of them already casting ballots (only 1.1 million such young Texans voted in all of 2016). College-educated white voters and Asian-Americans have turned out in even larger numbers, with both groups casting more ballots than they did four years ago, according to the Democratic group TargetSmart.
While Democrats were infuriated with the decision by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to limit the number of drop boxes for absentee ballots to one per county, they believe his decision to extend early voting from two to three weeks and to push local elections from the spring to November’s ballot has bolstered their turnout efforts.
Participation has been particularly high in the metropolitan areas — and not just the biggest cities, but also in booming exurban counties, where a diverse new mix of voters is shattering turnout records in the bedroom communities of Dallas, Austin and Houston.
“It is a competitive state, meaning a Democrat can now win statewide,” acknowledged Steve Munisteri, a former chairman of the Texas Republican Party, noting that about 10 million people had moved to the state in the last 20 years. “We’ve had the equivalent of two medium-sized states move in.”"