Kos writes about Texas’s steady march to swing-state status, but he overlooked one thing. He notes that the latest PPP Poll shows Romney with an anemic 50-43 lead in the Lone Star State, but he doesn’t dwell on the numbers among Latinos, where Obama leads by an equally meager 56-34 margin. A February Fox News Latino poll found Obama leading Romney 70%-14% nationally. An April Pew Research Poll found Obama ahead 67%-27%. If Obama were doing as well among Latinos in Texas as he is nationally, Texas would already be a swing-state. And there are the 2.7 million Latinos in Texas who are legally eligible to vote but who haven’t registered. Imagine if they all voted. At a 56% level of support, Obama would net 300,000 votes. At a 67% level of support, he would net 600,000 votes. McCain won the state by about 950,000. If the Latinos who are registered and likely to vote are added and their support is 67%, then the state would probably lean in Obama’s direction. And, remember, Romney is polling weaker than McCain, so Obama probably doesn’t have to make up a 950,000 vote deficit. It’s probably more like 650,000.
The Obama administration isn’t going to devote the kind of resources that would be required to take a real shot at winning Texas. But the fact that there is a clear path there already shows how quickly the GOP is going to have to change its nature. As Kos points out, the demographics of Texas tell an unforgiving tale for conservatives.
Out of Laredo’s 24,788 students, just 81 are Anglo. In Houston, just 8 percent of public schoolchildren are white, and that number is 5 percent in Dallas. In Fort Bend, 40 percent of kids were white in 2000. Today, it’s 19 percent. Lubbok went from 42 percent to 28 percent.
In the entire state, 43.1 percent of public schoolchildren were Anglo in 2000, compared to just 30.5 percent. And if Republicans are hoping that those are undocumented immigrants, turns out that just 5.4 percent of Texans lack the proper paperwork. Yes, that’s a serious number — 1.2 million — but it won’t save them in the long term.
Once those kids turn 18, the entire political culture of Texas will change. And if Texas is no longer the anchor of the Republican Party, the national political culture will change, too.
