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Redder
Interesting article today in the San Antonio fish wrapper. This picture summarizes it all by itself. We are certainly doing our part; we are the county directly north of San Antonio. I am shocked that Kerr County (to our west) is less Republican. The best part of this election is Abbott beating Beto Francis by a bigger margin than Cruz.
Harris County is an interesting case. Mail in ballots are limited in Texas so not much of a factor there. But election day shenanigans probably provided the margin of victory for a number of very tight local races. It’s really hard to make local officials run a fair election if they don’t want to.
Note that Ft Bend is the only county that flipped blue. Also all of the counties around Houston became bluer. The urban blight is spreading. Where I live in Guadalupe county and the counties that are east of SA and Austin are where people are moving to flee the cities and then promptly voting for the same things that made them flee.
This map is another piece of evidence that Democrats are urbanites and Republicans are more rural.
I lived in Texas for 10 years. This is an interesting map. Would you mind sharing the link to it? Thanks!
EDIT: Never mind. I found it but it’s behind a pay wall.
BTW, I did some research and Kerr County voters gave Abbott’s 2018 opponent 19.28 percent of the vote and Francis 20.65 percent (55 fewer votes). Given how many people are still mad over Abbott’s early lockdowns that’s not much of an indicator.
I looked at Guadalupe County:
Total: 18: 54,403 22: 57,242 Delta: 2,839
Abbott: 18: 36,284 22: 36,882 Delta: 598
Dem: 18: 17,265 22: 19,356 Delta: 2,091
Others: 18: 369 22: 1004 Delta: 635
Undervotes: 18: 369 22: 177 Delta: -192
It shows that the Dems picked up 74% of the increase in voters which can be explained a number of ways. My personal view is that Guadalupe (like many suburban/exurban) counties is becoming more populated with commuters into San Antonio/Austin and those people are more liberal.
Looks like in Texas, only the very poor or very rich vote Democrat.
The cities are blue and spreading. Harris County (Houston) went Blue in 08. Ft Worth went blue in 20 (by ~2k votes out of 8334K. No major city in Texas is red anymore (in Presidential elections, its different in gubernatorial elections).
The valley has been a democratic stronghold for a very long time. My mother used to say that no Hispanic ever votes for a Republican, and that attitude is slowly changing, very slowly. The consultant class think that the GOP stance on illegal immigration is the reason, but that isn’t it at all. Frankly Hispanic voters are traditionalists in many ways and vote the same way they always have since Texas was a one-party state. Getting them to change to the GOP even when they might align more with them is hard because it means getting them to admit that their traditional Democrat votes are mistakes and that strikes at pride as well.
We are OK here in Comal County, but we are fast becoming the new South Austin. Seems to me that the growth of San Antonio (Bexar County) has some what stagnated.
Beto is one of those politicians lately who generally never has a chance to win in races that nobody else will challenge and he does it because that’s his source of income. He’d probably have to take a pay cut if he were ever elected.
It has and it’s now in Guadalupe, Kendall, Medina, and Comal counties where San Antonio is growing. I think that Comal is in stage one where the conservatives in SA are moving there and, somewhat, countering the migration out of Austin, but eventually liberals from SA will start moving there to get decent schools and yards and then want city services and you end up with it becoming Ft Bend County.
That’s the only thing that has saved us so far is lack of utilities, mainly sewage and water. The developers do their damndest, but maintaining septic fields and paying $10.00 a foot to dig wells is not everyone’s cup of tea.