Probably not, but it is going to be a fight. In 2012 Romney took the state by about 1.2 million out of about 8 million votes cast. A change of about half a million votes and change would have changed the race.
Every metropolitan county in the state voted for Obama. Obama won Bexar county, with San Antonio, by 20,00 votes out of about half a million. Obama won Dallas county by about 100,000 votes out of about 700,000 cast. He won Travis county by about 90,000 votes out of about 370,000 votes cast. The larges county in Texas, Harris county, was split pretty evenly, but Obama won the Houston area by about 1,000 votes out of slightly over 1.1 million votes cast.
Harris County is now a ‘majority minority’ county. White non-Hispanics person make up about 33% of the county, while Hispanics make up 42% and Black person are about 20%. Obviously the voting population is a significantly different demographic, and that of likely voters different still.
That said Hispanics are voting at a rate that is 26% greater than was reported in 2012 in Texas for early voting. This is consistent and not necessarily indicative that politics will change this cycle in Texas.
But here is the interesting things. Recall that in 2012 around 1.1 million people voted in Harris county. Right now, a day before the election day, 977,000 people have voted. Out of a voting pool of 2.2 million. Estimates indicate that 22% are people who never voted before. In a county where 2/3 of the population is not white. I myself tried to vote twice before finding a time where there was not a line of people, mostly non-white, snaking out of the voting hall into the parking lot.
Texas does not register by party, and only knows who voted in a primary, which only a small part of the electorate does, certainly not young new voters, so any estimates on party is handwaving guesswork. But new votes tend to be young people who in Harris county tend to be non-white(look at the public schools seniors and college students) and Trump has a minuscule percentage of these young non-white people in polling.
Which again is saying nothing, other than in the largest county in Texas, which accounted for over 1.1 million of the 8 million votes case in 2012, is likely to have 1.4 or 1.5 million votes cast by the time the polls close on Tuesday. A county which has been the only large country evenly split between Democrat and Republican, could hand more net votes got Clinton than any county the was won by Obama in 2012.
Even though Trump is likely to win, the news gets better for Clinton. In the top 15 counties in Texas, again dominated by counties that Obama won in 2012, has been record breaking. In these counties, 41% of registered voters have already voted. This is in a states where normally barely 50% of the registered votes participate. In Travis county, which gave Obama a huge boost in net votes in 2008 despite it’s small number of voters, 51% of the registered voters have participated. Other small counties have also had voter turnout, counties that will go for Trump, but these tend be around the size of Travis county, and Obama even won some of these counties in 2012. As a matter of fact Obama won 6 of the top 15 counties in 2012, although both received about the same number of votes, about 2.5 million from these top 15 counties.
I have having a conversation the other day with an immigrant, who happened to just have received her green card. She was wondering why so few people vote in Texas. The reality is that it can be argued that votes don’t matte that much around here. Gerrymandering means that most races are fixed, and Trump is likely to eek out a victory due to existing demographics. On the other hand, it could be that we have a high voter turn out, the demographics might have shifted just enough that Clinton can take the state. This is really the first election, since I started voting, where a progressive vote could make a difference. Not that it will necessarily change the election. Clinton has better than a 90% chance of being the POTUS tomorrow night. Honestly, I am giddy with the overwhelming anticipation of this historic movement.
But it would be nice not have Texas be part of the basket of deplorable states that Trump wins.