At the general meeting on January 17th Bruce Elfant, Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector, spoke at length about the challenges before us all to help Democrats win statewide elections.  Bruce presented his analysis supported by charts and backed by research.  A strategy to elect Democrats to statewide offices has three components in every County of the state.  1)  Voter registration,  2)  Voter turnout and 3) margin of victory which can be thought of as 'hearts and minds'.  

 

When looking at voter registration across all the counties in Texas, Travis County and Fort Bend County are exemplary, each having about 95% registration of all eligible voters.  Voter turnout in 2022 was highest in Collin, Denton and Travis Counties around 52%.  There is considerable room for improvement of voter turnout across the state.  Lastly, Bruce looked at margin and showed us that the margin of victory for Democrats in Travis County in 2022 was around 47% with Beto getting 73% and Abbott getting 26% of votes, a far greater margin of victory than any other populous county in Texas.  

 

Bruce then moved on to his second point of the evening.  Unless and until Dallas, Bexar and Harris counties come closer to matching Travis County’s levels of voter registration, voter turnout and margin, Democrats will not succeed to win statewide offices in Texas.  Bruce said that four of the ten largest cities in the United States are in Texas and we are an urban state.  Our urban centers lean Democratic.  For us to succeed, Dallas, Bexar and Harris Counties must do more to register and turnout voters. Although those counties are very populous and Democratic, their contribution to the statewide bucket of net Democratic votes has lagged behind their potential.  Those of us who live in Travis County can think about how we might leverage our connections or support efforts to reach out to voters in Dallas, Bexar and Harris Counties.