Texas Democrats, who predicted big gains for their party in 2014 under Wendy Davis but were embarrassed by an elephant stampede which kept all statewide offices in Republican hands, are again predicting big gains in the 2018 races, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The group Progress Texas says an analysis of Texas voter turnout in the 2016 Presidential race shows that new voter growth contributed to increasing support for Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 5-1.
"Texas is one of the fastest growing states in American and, over the past decade, the growing electorate has increased the Democratic vote by more than 1,000,000 compared to 150,000 for Republcians," said Ed Espinoza, the Executive Director of Progress Texas. "Democrats are making up ground statewide while Republicans are at a relative standstill."
Progress Texas cites the growing Latino and Millennial vote, as well as more immigration into Texas by voters from generally Democratic states. California has been the number one contributor of new voters to Texas over the past several years.
Republican activists say Progress Texas is 'falling into the same trap' that prompted its predecessor group, Battleground Texas, to make similar predictions of victory before the 2014 election.
They say Democrats are simply counting all new Hispanic, and indeed all minority voters, as Democrats, whether they are or not. While the Anglo vote in Texas does have a tendency to lean Republican while the minority vote leans Democrat, analysts say there is no reason to believe that the growing Latino immigrant and first generation population in Texas will be as monolithically Democrat as African Americans, who vote as much as 90% Democrat.
Most analysts point out that Hispanics will be like every other immigrant group dating back to the early 19th Century. By the first and second generation, their politics will be far more influenced by their profession, income, marital status and interests than it by the fact that they have Latino forebears.
Republicans also point out that turnout for the statewide elections is substantially lower than for Presidential contests like 2016, which is where Progress Texas bases its numbers, and the very people the Democrat group cites, the Hispanics and Millennials, are the ones who are less likely to vote.
Progress Texas concedes that, predicting 2.8 million Republican votes and 2.3 million Democrat votes in statewide elections in 2018.
"That 500,000 vote gape could potentially be overcome by turning out progressive minded voters among those 1.4 million Millennials and Gen-X new voters," he said.