He says, “It’s a heavy lift, but I believe Colin Allred has the best background
and the ability to increase minority turnout, earn minority support, and win a
larger share of the Anglo vote.”
A
look at the Cruz-O’Rourke race of 2018 gives some indication of what it will
take for Allred to win. O’Rourke lost to Cruz by only 2.6 points. To get to 50.1
percent, Allred will need to pump up the women’s vote, the 18–44 age bracket,
and nonwhite voters. O’Rourke won women 54 percent to 46 percent with a
surprising 49–49 tie among white college women. He also won the 18–44 group 59
percent to 40 percent and won the nonwhite vote, including Blacks and
Hispanics, 69 percent to 31 percent. There might be a chance now, with the Supreme
Court’s unpopular decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Texas’s controversial
abortion ban, and an indicted Trump heading the ticket, for Allred to nudge
those numbers upward.
Focusing
on suburban women, the young, and nonwhite voters has been an effective
formula for Democrats in some battleground states, but Texas, a
majority-minority state with a population of 40 million split almost half and
half between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites, remains conservative
Republican. Black men voted in fewer numbers in 2020 and 2022, Professor
Jillson says, and the Hispanic vote is moving in the Republican direction,
especially among men, in the formerly solid Democratic Rio Grande Valley. “The
Hispanic Valley culture is machista, conservative, traditional, and ridden with
client politics—money and other favors in exchange for votes,” says Jillson.
“Trump’s narrative appeals to them.”