Can Presidential Candidate Joe Biden win Texas?

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally Monday, March 2, 2020, at Texas Southern University in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

As millions of Americans are early voting and sending in their mail-in ballots, it is clear that this election is both monumental and extraordinary. Already in early voting states there is a record turn-out, as Americans cast their ballots for the next four years of policy, representation, and leadership. However, most presidential contests, especially in recent history, only come down to the decisions of a few key states. On the election night of 2016, states that were previously considered solidly blue, such as Wisconsin and Michigan, turned red, as Donald Trump secured enough of the popular vote to win all of their electors. Joe Biden has invested a $6 million dollar ad buy in Texas, which raises the question: in 2020, will Texas do the same thing for Joe that Michigan did for Donald in 2016?

Why is Texas so important? A brief explanation of the Electoral College

Texas holds the second most electors in the union for the Electoral College: 38. And, since the election of 1980, those electors have always gone to the Republican candidate. By Texas state law, the candidate that holds the plurality of the votes – or most votes – will receive all of the electors that Texas holds in the Electoral College. This system of voting is called the “winner-takes-all,” and is the state law for 48 states, with Nebraska and Maine being the only exceptions. This system can be partially to blame for the seemingly undemocratic elections of 2000 and 2016, where the presidential candidate that received the most votes nationally did not win the Electoral College.

If the total votes by the end of election night put Joe Biden even only .1% ahead of Donald Trump, Joe Biden will receive all 38 electors. This means that Joe Biden will automatically win the election, even if he loses all of the states that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Joe Biden can win without Texas, but Donald Trump cannot.

As shown in the above map, assuming that Donald Trump wins all of the states that he won in 2016 except for Texas, he will lose. However, a lot of the states shown above as casting their electors towards Trump are swing states and therefore are not necessarily solidly Republican; Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida are among the most important swing states in this election. This explains how we can arrive to the conclusion that with Texas, Joe Biden will automatically win. Even if all of the swing states do not go his way, he will still have the 270 that are needed for him to win the Electoral College.

How could Texas turn from a solidly Republican state to a Swing State?

Joe Biden did not throw $6 million dollars away. His campaign, based off of the polling numbers from FiveThirtyEight – a non-partisan firm conducting statistical analysis of polls – made this informed decision after seeing how close the race is. In fact, in a running average of all polls conducted since late February, accounting for their quality, sample size, and recency, Joe Biden is 1.4 points behind Donald Trump. At one point at the end of July and the start of August, Joe Biden actually pulled ahead in the polling average.

However, polls have been notoriously unreliable. The results from the 2016 election surprised most, due to the confidence that the polling had given Clinton, ultimately overestimating her support in the Rust Belt that Trump infamously won to secure the presidency. However, it was not only in the Rust Belt that these polls were unreliable. In Texas, and especially during October and the weeks leading up to the election, Hillary was consistently polled at less than 40%, even as low as 35% in a B rated poll. But, on election day, she secured 43% of the vote. If the same trend holds true for Biden, even if he is behind Trump right now, it is possible that the polls that the running average is based off of are actually underestimating his support. This has also been true for previous presidential elections and federal congressional elections within Texas.

Furthermore, the state of Texas is shifting dramatically in its demography. Latinx and Hispanics are almost 40% of Texas’ entire population, leading to the prediction that the plurality of Texans by this year will be Hispanic and Latinx, and by 2042, these communities will be the majority. It is not unreasonable to conclude that the Hispanic and Latino population generally supports Joe Biden more than Donald Trump. In fact, in 2016, Trump’s campaign was based around a fear-mongering alienating campaign of the American Latinx. In 2016, Clinton secured 66% of the Latinx vote nationwide.

If Joe Biden can win Texas on election night, the nightmare is over. Donald Trump will join the nine other single term presidents in United States history. With Joe Biden’s investment, the polling underestimation, and Texas’ shifting demographics, 2020 might be the first year that Texas has gone for a Democratic presidential candidate in 40 years. Whatever the outcome, November 3rd, 2020, will be a historic day, as the nation faces an election night during the middle of a pandemic, which has only intensified and exacerbated existing divisions within the country. Watch Texas on election night.