I remember the analysis after 2018 when statisticians said if just over 20,000 in Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio had voted, Beto would have won. So yes, we want to acknowledge rural voters but concentrate on the non-voters in Urban Areas.
One of the problems with this is these counties is they are all voting over 55% or 60% and while there are a lot of votes here, there other targets.
There are many counties that voted in the 30%/40% with 65% to 75% Democratic votes. Some of these counties have left over 100,000 Democratic on the table.
The best example is El Paso - Beto's home county. Voted 44.53%, 74.3% Beto approximately 113000 Democrats who are already registered voters were left on the table. If they had voted 60% there would have been 52,500 more Beto votes.
But also, Candidates only think the urban areas are the big counties. How many big candidates came to Ellis County in 2024? Zero. How many came to Irving, zero. And I am in Dallas County. Remember I told you no one walked doors in Irving except a few of us and you can see why Collin overwhelming over performed in Irving. Cause he was the only candidate I had lit for. And they ran my lists. I was talking to Republicans. Now that was the problem. That assumed Democrats had already been spoken to. But they hadn’t. Can you imagine what numbers would have been like if big giant blue Irving had actually turned out? Yeah. The Dallas consultants don’t want that to happen. That is why I am getting so much push back. I can tell you right now why all our city council candidates the past few years have lost. I am not a fancy campaign consultant, I am just a retired middle aged lawyer. I looked at the publicly available data and I figured it out and we won. We figured out the message at the doors when we talked to voters about what they wanted city council to do. Fix the damn voucher scam! Yeah city council has nothing to do with vouchers. It doesn’t matter. Voters aren’t rational, neither am I. I am passionate. And voters know I am fighting for them. So all the big slick consultants can go back to wherever they came from. I am a Texas Democrat.
OMG, so ridiculous. I went to a Beto rally in Ellis County a few years back, and there were like 3,000 people out there, in 100° weather. It was amazing. Plus, after Collin and Denton flip, the following two counties we target are Ellis and Kaufman. Maybe we should call them "metro" areas as the Texas Comptroller does? There's a clip of it here: https://www.lonestarleft.com/p/ellis-countys-future-is-blue-democrats
I agree. We must go after votes where the Democratic voters are. It must be hell being a Republican. They need the votes of Republicans in metro areas, but they also need to suppress Democrats' votes to win. I hadn't actually thought that deeply about it, assuming rural voters were still abundant enough to overcome the metro voters.
Now I really see why Tim O'Hare rammed through the mid-district redistricting of Tarrant County. It was partly just because they can, but it was also a necessity. So, Republicans created a map that chops up the most likely Democratic precincts, making it harder for Democrats to vote. And the S.Ct. is okay with that. What if that's not enough for them? What if Tarrant County goes true Blue? Republicans are nervous.
Look at what Republicans are focusing their attention on and you will see verification of Michelle's numbers. Republcians are telegraphing where they are weak when they go after Democrats in Tarrant County. Oh, they don't want us to vote in Tarrant County? Then we better get after it and GOTV.
I grew up rural, although my old county is on the metro list now. But, rural is still a mindset for me. Rural voters deserve an opportunity to cast a meaningful vote. After all, most Republican policies hurt them. Furthermore, democracy is destroyed when elections are not competitive. Even if they might not win, a Democrat on a local rural ballot will hold the Republican accountable for their positions. Additionally, a Democrat raising factual and ideological challenges to the Republican educates the local voters. That's good for all of us. If a Republican is constrained from a bad act because they fear their constituents might vote for the Democrat, it inures to everyone's benefit.
In Texas, rural voters used to have a lot of power in the legislature, but it seems the recent Dan Patrick/Greg Abbott purge in the primaries reduced their power. Democrats can capitalize on that. So, Democrats must go into expansion mode to rural Texas for the future.
I agree it's probably not worth it in the next couple of election cycles to campaign out there. But maybe we can figure out a way to get some surrogates with time on their hands, like Beto, out to the boonies who can cut Republican margins. That couldn't hurt. If this is a wave election, let's make it a tsunami.
This analysis isn’t an argument for abandoning rural voters or writing off rural Texas. It’s an argument about where statewide elections are actually won and lost. The data show that both Democratic voters and non-voters are overwhelmingly concentrated in urban and metro counties, meaning that’s where turnout failures are most damaging and where investment pays the biggest dividends.
I also agree that rural voters deserve competitive elections and accountability. Democracy is healthier when Republicans can’t run unopposed and unchecked. That’s a values argument, and it matters.
Where I push back is on the idea that rural outreach should be a central lever for flipping Texas. The math just doesn’t support that. Rural margins can be shaved at the edges, sure, but they cannot compensate for underperformance in cities and metros where hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters already live. If Democrats want to win, the priority has to be urban turnout and suburban margins first. Everything else is additive, not foundational.
I know Michelle. I got all that. I was trying to agree with you by adding additional arguments to your thesis. It was very clear you don't advocate abandoning rural voters. I understand the math about the damage of the turnout failure. I was really aiming my comment at a general audience. ♥
It was very enlightening to think about the fact that Republicans are as reliant on urban areas as they are. It completely explains why they are so focused on messing up Democratic turnout in metro areas, like Tarrant County. I had just assumed they did that because they could.
When I asked Kendall Scudder whether Democrats were going to get anywhere in West Texas, his response was that they were going to try to turn out Hispanics and hope to cut the margins out there. He put it very diplomatically, but he made it clear Democrats weren’t going to be trying to flip West Texas Republicans.
Realistically, you can't flip an 80/20 district in one election cycle. Or two. It will probably take a few. But Lubbock, specifically, should be the target next.
I just want to highlight your statement, "....rural is a mindset for me." I think we could state that for a noticeable percentage of the urban voters. So I grudgingly agree with the data findings, but....
This is why they are going after the big Blue counties: trying to take over the election process, suppress voters, take over county judge positions etc. They took control of the Dallas Court of Appeals in 2024 and that should be a huge wake up call.
There must be a mistake in the Dallas data. In 2022, Beto got 392,634 total votes in Dallas County, then Mike Collier got 390,165, and it goes down from there, but with 1.4 million voters in a democratic county, I know when had more than 49,000 Dem votes. Believe me, I make more typos than most. So absolutely nothing wrong, but just not sure what number you are using and heck maybe the comptroller is gone, but what I just quoted is from the SOS for the county vote in 2022.
You're right. I'd be embarrassed to tell you how long I worked on that spreadsheet all week, on and off, while I was going through the primary races. I fixed it now. It pushed up the overall number to over 95%. Not that far off. Thank you for catching that. Stupid fucking typos. But it doesn't change my thesis.
Looks like you fixed it. Cause Beto got 62.78% of the Dallas County vote . But what happened in 2024, was Kamala only for 60.14% county wide but Collin got 63.05%. But overall turnout was way down for a presidential year at 57.92% vs 65.75% in 2020. Now this was with 3 weeks of early voting and before 2021 voter suppression. So 2022 numbers probably make more sense. However the difference is you have to look at 2018, on a precinct by precinct level to really gauge what is happening since that was the blue wave under Trump. But we have a shit ton of redistricting then. And 2.4 million new voters in North Texas alone.
Great work! Will share with some precinct chairs after Jan. 1. They are on Holiday mode. Our Bexar County Democratic Party Chair sent out an email asking them to make a New Years Resolution to work their precinct. It came with a form to fill out asking to make a commitment to GOTV. I’m so ready…. This article helps too.
I have a group text of precinct chairs around me. Only one responded. I will have to wait until Jan. 2, then I will make sure they fill out the form. It is connected to our coordinated campaign and GOTV. 🙏🏼
Hello Eva, do you have a volunteer coordinator or precinct chair coordinator on staff? We have one person on staff for both of those responsibilities. Some Precinct Chairs on the committee though.
Not a paid one. I guess that would be me. I organized the trainings. However, things changed when we have a coordinated campaign. They do get paid, they do the training. Then I just on board them with the basic training for their own precinct. I hope this answers your question.
Eva I just know that you have done a lot as a volunteer. I wondered if Bexar County is doing as Dallas has done and hired a person who is developing a program for precinct chairs with solid goals and outreach plans.
The problem is simply numbers. To win in Texas Democrats have to get 29% of the Democrats who didn't vote 4 years ago to vote. That's assuming no Republicans who didn't vote, get pulled in to vote with that effort (not likely). More likely a Republican votes for every 4 Democrat that gets activated. If that happens, the Democrats need 40% of their unvoted.
Many people who voted Republican 4 years ago are not core Republicans, but casual fellow travelers. If the Democrats get 7% of the Republican vote to swing, the Democrats don't need a GOTV.
In essence, the Democrats need both GOTV and swing to win. For swing, they have to find the most likely Republicans to swing (my guess is the Valley and the Dallas/Ft Worth suburbs) AND for GOTV we hit the urban areas.
In the end I agree with you. Democrats should not spend time and money in areas with little gains. That is a pure data nerd view. The Democrats have to find where area with the densest weak Republican votes, and where is our Democratic turnout lightest (I know precincts with over 1000 Democratic votes left on the table). That's where we should spend our money.
But another part of it is effect. A well publicized meeting (even if occasional) in rural areas has effects outside that one area. By being well publicized, it is can be spun like a meeting to all rural areas. It shows the Democrats want to be the party of the whole state, it helps defeat the Republican stereotype they're urban elitists. I'm not saying the Democrats spend all our time there (actually as little as practical to send this message), but they shouldn't write them off. Foregoing rural commitments gives bad signals to partisans on both sides. To Republicans, Democrats are elitist and don't care, to Democrats, these people are not worthy. How many times do you hear a Democrat say nasty things of Bubba and his ilk. We need to be better than that.
That's the crux of it: "Democrats should not spend time and money in areas with little gains." Too many people don't get that. I'm still having people argue with me over this on social media. Not to say we ignore rural Democrats, and I think that's where the message gets lost, that there has to be better resource allocation.
You are correct that turning out the vote in urban areas is key to taking back our state government. We have a money challenge. I, personally, believe that James Talarico is effective at reaching out to a broad audience and is a unifier. Dems must be authentic, less corporate, and less scripted. Expose the TX GOP fascist DPS deployment to check IDs at public restrooms at the Capitol, their power grid failures, the lack of preparedness for natural disasters such as the July 4th Central TX Floods, their undermining of public education and academic freedom, their corruption, and healthcare failures with the spread of measles and whooping cough. We must vote these crooks out of office!
Brilliant. Now, precinct by precinct to drill down to the highest probability of potential voters to engage. Then set up the operation to do so complete with follow up.
I remember the analysis after 2018 when statisticians said if just over 20,000 in Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio had voted, Beto would have won. So yes, we want to acknowledge rural voters but concentrate on the non-voters in Urban Areas.
💯
Me too. I was told that Bexar County alone had enough voters to get him over the finish line but they did not vote! 😤
I hope and pray they VOTE!
One of the problems with this is these counties is they are all voting over 55% or 60% and while there are a lot of votes here, there other targets.
There are many counties that voted in the 30%/40% with 65% to 75% Democratic votes. Some of these counties have left over 100,000 Democratic on the table.
The best example is El Paso - Beto's home county. Voted 44.53%, 74.3% Beto approximately 113000 Democrats who are already registered voters were left on the table. If they had voted 60% there would have been 52,500 more Beto votes.
But also, Candidates only think the urban areas are the big counties. How many big candidates came to Ellis County in 2024? Zero. How many came to Irving, zero. And I am in Dallas County. Remember I told you no one walked doors in Irving except a few of us and you can see why Collin overwhelming over performed in Irving. Cause he was the only candidate I had lit for. And they ran my lists. I was talking to Republicans. Now that was the problem. That assumed Democrats had already been spoken to. But they hadn’t. Can you imagine what numbers would have been like if big giant blue Irving had actually turned out? Yeah. The Dallas consultants don’t want that to happen. That is why I am getting so much push back. I can tell you right now why all our city council candidates the past few years have lost. I am not a fancy campaign consultant, I am just a retired middle aged lawyer. I looked at the publicly available data and I figured it out and we won. We figured out the message at the doors when we talked to voters about what they wanted city council to do. Fix the damn voucher scam! Yeah city council has nothing to do with vouchers. It doesn’t matter. Voters aren’t rational, neither am I. I am passionate. And voters know I am fighting for them. So all the big slick consultants can go back to wherever they came from. I am a Texas Democrat.
OMG, so ridiculous. I went to a Beto rally in Ellis County a few years back, and there were like 3,000 people out there, in 100° weather. It was amazing. Plus, after Collin and Denton flip, the following two counties we target are Ellis and Kaufman. Maybe we should call them "metro" areas as the Texas Comptroller does? There's a clip of it here: https://www.lonestarleft.com/p/ellis-countys-future-is-blue-democrats
Yes Kaufman is soon to be not just targeted but changed.
Yup, you got it all right. As I always say, I have learned so much from you.
I agree. We must go after votes where the Democratic voters are. It must be hell being a Republican. They need the votes of Republicans in metro areas, but they also need to suppress Democrats' votes to win. I hadn't actually thought that deeply about it, assuming rural voters were still abundant enough to overcome the metro voters.
Now I really see why Tim O'Hare rammed through the mid-district redistricting of Tarrant County. It was partly just because they can, but it was also a necessity. So, Republicans created a map that chops up the most likely Democratic precincts, making it harder for Democrats to vote. And the S.Ct. is okay with that. What if that's not enough for them? What if Tarrant County goes true Blue? Republicans are nervous.
Look at what Republicans are focusing their attention on and you will see verification of Michelle's numbers. Republcians are telegraphing where they are weak when they go after Democrats in Tarrant County. Oh, they don't want us to vote in Tarrant County? Then we better get after it and GOTV.
I grew up rural, although my old county is on the metro list now. But, rural is still a mindset for me. Rural voters deserve an opportunity to cast a meaningful vote. After all, most Republican policies hurt them. Furthermore, democracy is destroyed when elections are not competitive. Even if they might not win, a Democrat on a local rural ballot will hold the Republican accountable for their positions. Additionally, a Democrat raising factual and ideological challenges to the Republican educates the local voters. That's good for all of us. If a Republican is constrained from a bad act because they fear their constituents might vote for the Democrat, it inures to everyone's benefit.
In Texas, rural voters used to have a lot of power in the legislature, but it seems the recent Dan Patrick/Greg Abbott purge in the primaries reduced their power. Democrats can capitalize on that. So, Democrats must go into expansion mode to rural Texas for the future.
I agree it's probably not worth it in the next couple of election cycles to campaign out there. But maybe we can figure out a way to get some surrogates with time on their hands, like Beto, out to the boonies who can cut Republican margins. That couldn't hurt. If this is a wave election, let's make it a tsunami.
This analysis isn’t an argument for abandoning rural voters or writing off rural Texas. It’s an argument about where statewide elections are actually won and lost. The data show that both Democratic voters and non-voters are overwhelmingly concentrated in urban and metro counties, meaning that’s where turnout failures are most damaging and where investment pays the biggest dividends.
I also agree that rural voters deserve competitive elections and accountability. Democracy is healthier when Republicans can’t run unopposed and unchecked. That’s a values argument, and it matters.
Where I push back is on the idea that rural outreach should be a central lever for flipping Texas. The math just doesn’t support that. Rural margins can be shaved at the edges, sure, but they cannot compensate for underperformance in cities and metros where hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters already live. If Democrats want to win, the priority has to be urban turnout and suburban margins first. Everything else is additive, not foundational.
Rural voters matter, but cities decide Texas.
I know Michelle. I got all that. I was trying to agree with you by adding additional arguments to your thesis. It was very clear you don't advocate abandoning rural voters. I understand the math about the damage of the turnout failure. I was really aiming my comment at a general audience. ♥
It was very enlightening to think about the fact that Republicans are as reliant on urban areas as they are. It completely explains why they are so focused on messing up Democratic turnout in metro areas, like Tarrant County. I had just assumed they did that because they could.
When I asked Kendall Scudder whether Democrats were going to get anywhere in West Texas, his response was that they were going to try to turn out Hispanics and hope to cut the margins out there. He put it very diplomatically, but he made it clear Democrats weren’t going to be trying to flip West Texas Republicans.
Realistically, you can't flip an 80/20 district in one election cycle. Or two. It will probably take a few. But Lubbock, specifically, should be the target next.
I just want to highlight your statement, "....rural is a mindset for me." I think we could state that for a noticeable percentage of the urban voters. So I grudgingly agree with the data findings, but....
This is why they are going after the big Blue counties: trying to take over the election process, suppress voters, take over county judge positions etc. They took control of the Dallas Court of Appeals in 2024 and that should be a huge wake up call.
There must be a mistake in the Dallas data. In 2022, Beto got 392,634 total votes in Dallas County, then Mike Collier got 390,165, and it goes down from there, but with 1.4 million voters in a democratic county, I know when had more than 49,000 Dem votes. Believe me, I make more typos than most. So absolutely nothing wrong, but just not sure what number you are using and heck maybe the comptroller is gone, but what I just quoted is from the SOS for the county vote in 2022.
You're right. I'd be embarrassed to tell you how long I worked on that spreadsheet all week, on and off, while I was going through the primary races. I fixed it now. It pushed up the overall number to over 95%. Not that far off. Thank you for catching that. Stupid fucking typos. But it doesn't change my thesis.
Thesis is spot on. I make typos all the time. You know I love you and adore you and have your back.
Looks like you fixed it. Cause Beto got 62.78% of the Dallas County vote . But what happened in 2024, was Kamala only for 60.14% county wide but Collin got 63.05%. But overall turnout was way down for a presidential year at 57.92% vs 65.75% in 2020. Now this was with 3 weeks of early voting and before 2021 voter suppression. So 2022 numbers probably make more sense. However the difference is you have to look at 2018, on a precinct by precinct level to really gauge what is happening since that was the blue wave under Trump. But we have a shit ton of redistricting then. And 2.4 million new voters in North Texas alone.
Great work! Will share with some precinct chairs after Jan. 1. They are on Holiday mode. Our Bexar County Democratic Party Chair sent out an email asking them to make a New Years Resolution to work their precinct. It came with a form to fill out asking to make a commitment to GOTV. I’m so ready…. This article helps too.
I have a group text of precinct chairs around me. Only one responded. I will have to wait until Jan. 2, then I will make sure they fill out the form. It is connected to our coordinated campaign and GOTV. 🙏🏼
Hello Eva, do you have a volunteer coordinator or precinct chair coordinator on staff? We have one person on staff for both of those responsibilities. Some Precinct Chairs on the committee though.
Not a paid one. I guess that would be me. I organized the trainings. However, things changed when we have a coordinated campaign. They do get paid, they do the training. Then I just on board them with the basic training for their own precinct. I hope this answers your question.
Eva I just know that you have done a lot as a volunteer. I wondered if Bexar County is doing as Dallas has done and hired a person who is developing a program for precinct chairs with solid goals and outreach plans.
TDP and Blue Texas is.
What I am saying is not disagreement, but something my numbers tell me. I will be posting a substack today titled "What it Takes For A Democrat To Win Texas" (https://open.substack.com/pub/stevenweintraub/p/what-does-it-take-for-a-democrat?r=dadro&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
The problem is simply numbers. To win in Texas Democrats have to get 29% of the Democrats who didn't vote 4 years ago to vote. That's assuming no Republicans who didn't vote, get pulled in to vote with that effort (not likely). More likely a Republican votes for every 4 Democrat that gets activated. If that happens, the Democrats need 40% of their unvoted.
Many people who voted Republican 4 years ago are not core Republicans, but casual fellow travelers. If the Democrats get 7% of the Republican vote to swing, the Democrats don't need a GOTV.
In essence, the Democrats need both GOTV and swing to win. For swing, they have to find the most likely Republicans to swing (my guess is the Valley and the Dallas/Ft Worth suburbs) AND for GOTV we hit the urban areas.
In the end I agree with you. Democrats should not spend time and money in areas with little gains. That is a pure data nerd view. The Democrats have to find where area with the densest weak Republican votes, and where is our Democratic turnout lightest (I know precincts with over 1000 Democratic votes left on the table). That's where we should spend our money.
But another part of it is effect. A well publicized meeting (even if occasional) in rural areas has effects outside that one area. By being well publicized, it is can be spun like a meeting to all rural areas. It shows the Democrats want to be the party of the whole state, it helps defeat the Republican stereotype they're urban elitists. I'm not saying the Democrats spend all our time there (actually as little as practical to send this message), but they shouldn't write them off. Foregoing rural commitments gives bad signals to partisans on both sides. To Republicans, Democrats are elitist and don't care, to Democrats, these people are not worthy. How many times do you hear a Democrat say nasty things of Bubba and his ilk. We need to be better than that.
That's the crux of it: "Democrats should not spend time and money in areas with little gains." Too many people don't get that. I'm still having people argue with me over this on social media. Not to say we ignore rural Democrats, and I think that's where the message gets lost, that there has to be better resource allocation.
You are correct that turning out the vote in urban areas is key to taking back our state government. We have a money challenge. I, personally, believe that James Talarico is effective at reaching out to a broad audience and is a unifier. Dems must be authentic, less corporate, and less scripted. Expose the TX GOP fascist DPS deployment to check IDs at public restrooms at the Capitol, their power grid failures, the lack of preparedness for natural disasters such as the July 4th Central TX Floods, their undermining of public education and academic freedom, their corruption, and healthcare failures with the spread of measles and whooping cough. We must vote these crooks out of office!
💯
Thanks, Michelle! Shared on bsky, lol.
Preach, Michelle, @lonestarleft!
Brilliant. Now, precinct by precinct to drill down to the highest probability of potential voters to engage. Then set up the operation to do so complete with follow up.
Which is what the GOP does, particularly in key states.