For your consideration:
.
Fixating on Zapata County and saying Dems have a Latino problem in Texas is inaccurate.The reality is Latino voter participation broke records and expanded the democratic vote margins in the state.
#Texas #LatinoVote Thread 1/5 ⇩
@LatinoDecisions / @JoltAction— Antonio Arellano (@AntonioArellano) 12:30 PM – 05 November 2020
.
Historic Latino voter turnout: 500,000 first-time Latino voters voted during early voting in Texas.Overall the Latino vote increased compared to 2016 and 2018.
3/5
#Texas #LatinoVote— Antonio Arellano (@AntonioArellano) 12:30 PM – 05 November 2020
.
Don’t use the RGV to try and pin Texas red on us. Trump ran ahead in Texas with white voters.Don’t fall for this Latino RGV distraction. Yes, we have work to do in the RGV but the bigger story is anglos did not match Beto numbers, they went Trump.
5/5
#Texas #LatinoVote— Antonio Arellano (@AntonioArellano) 12:30 PM – 05 November 2020
It’s very much not my intent to pin blame on anyone. As I noted in my post about how voting went in these Latino counties, which includes a lot of RGV counties as well as Bexar and El Paso, I’m just showing what happened. I think Jolt has done a lot of good work, a lot of hard and necessary work, and I salute them for it.
I can’t address the specifics of the numbers cited in those tweets – I don’t have his data, and the public data is quite limited right now. I do have some limited Harris County canvass data, courtesy of Greg Wythe, so I thought I’d bring that in here to continue the discussion. Here’s what I can say about how voting went in the five predominantly Latino State Rep districts in Harris County:
Dist Trump Clinton Trump% Clinton% Margin
===============================================
140 6,119 21,009 21.8% 75.0% 14,890
143 8,746 23,873 26.0% 70.9% 15,127
144 10,555 15,885 38.3% 57.6% 5,330
145 10,102 23,534 28.7% 66.8% 13,432
148 14,815 31,004 30.3% 63.4% 16,279
50,337 115,305 30.4% 69.6% 64,968
Dist Trump Biden Trump% Biden% Margin
===============================================
140 10,175 22,651 30.3% 67.4% 12,476
143 13,105 25,109 33.5% 64.1% 12,004
144 14,415 17,174 44.5% 53.0% 2,759
145 15,198 28,200 34.1% 63.4% 13,102
148 20,207 40,821 32.2% 65.0% 20,614
73,100 133,955 35.3% 64.7% 60,855
The first table is 2016, the second is 2020. Please note that while the percentages for each candidate is their actual percentage for all voters in the district, the totals at the bottom are just the two-candidate values. I apologize for mixing apples and oranges. We should note that while these five districts are the five predominantly Latino districts in Houston, there is some variance. HDs 140 and 143 have the largest Latino population totals by percentage, while the others have a significant minority of Anglo residents. HD144 includes the Pasadena area, while HDs 145 and 148 include parts of the Heights and surrounding neighborhoods. HD148 is probably the least Latino of the five, and is currently represented by Anna Eastman, who won the special election to serve the remainder of Jessica Farrar’s term, though she was defeated in the primary by Penny Shaw.
As you can see, Trump improved on his 2016 performance in all five districts. Biden got more votes than Clinton in all five districts, but had a lower percentage in all but HD148. The reason both Trump and Biden could see an increase in percentage in HD148 is because the third-party share of the vote was so high in 2016 – it was over six percent that year, but looks to be less than three percent this year. Overall, Trump lost these five districts by about four thousand fewer votes than he did in 2016, with about 20K more votes cast.
This is not an eye-popping change like what we saw in some RGV counties was, but it’s still a decline. I don’t know how much of that is from Latinos voting for Trump, and how much is from Anglo voters in these districts turning out for Trump. Jolt’s mission is to turn out Latino voters, and in the aggregate that’s going to be good for Democrats even if there are some rough spots, and even if it’s not quite as good as we might have expected. My approach is not as granular as it could be, so we shouldn’t draw broad conclusions from it. There are plenty of Latino precincts elsewhere in Harris County – HDs 137 and 138 will have quite a few – so there’s much more to be said. This is the data I have right now. Make of it what you will.
So, what’s the third party percentages among Latinos in these communities? During election time these people are lumped with “undecided”, which is a major campaign focus for both parties, but many people are decided to vote third party and will vote third party again.
David if you are really interested go look at the county’s website, make sure you click on the house to get the precinct by precinct results.
https://www.harrisvotes.com/ElectionResults/ElectionDay?lang=en-US
Sounds like some blame-spinning. Nationally, Biden ran BELOW Clinton 2016 in percentage of both Black and Hispanic vote. I have little doubt that the same was true in the Valley, contra Arellano.
The real issue, which I’ll have in a piece Monday, is that “Hispanic” is an even more artificial term vis a vis Census, etc. than African American (which I’ll ALSO cover Monday). Per Nikole Hannah Jones (1619), what do white Cubans have to do with Caribbean blacks from Spanish lands, or to extend her, with “browns” from South Texas? Not a lot. https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1323787949058785283
THAT said, I’ve written for almost a decade about how Texas Dems need to stop with the belief/wet dream that “demographics is destiny.”
They need to junk it. Probably need to junk Hinojosa as party head, too. https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2013/02/texas-dems-should-be-circumspect-about.html
An inconvenient fact for Democrats is that curtailing immigration helps put a floor on wages. What did the Democratic party do to reassure voters that we could have both more immigration and a living wage? Donald Trump’s (notional) wall directly benefits unskilled laborers and recent immigrants, in particular, but the benefit accrues to skilled labor, too. We have to stop taking those votes for granted. “It’s (always) the economy, stupid.”
Mama you were doing okay until you threw the wall in there, the wall does not stop people from coming in. They can cut it, go over it, or under it. Trump and his idiot followers seem to think that a wall can stop people from coming in, it can’t.
When they passed amnesty E-Verify was to become the law of the land. That would be a much more effective way to do it. A national Id would also go a long way. Just like most of us carry some identification with us, one of those license size passport IDs could be required. I don’t know if it is still the law but during the 60s and 70s guys had carry their selective service cards.
Did you wave at my point when it passed by you, Manny? I’m not advocating for a wall, and certainly not for a national ID card. Trump’s immigration policies *have* dramatically reduced immigration. On balance I count that as a bad thing, but it has had the benefit of holding wages up.
Good point Mamacita, you have to make the case with the voter that you have their economic interest at heart.
Mama you are going to support that argument about the stopping the flow of illegal immigration, unless you are now believing Trump’s stories.
From CNN,
“If you compare the average for the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years (the first years solely under Trump) and the average for the 2014, 2015 and 2016 fiscal years (solely under Obama), it is a 43% increase under Trump, Gelatt noted.
“The number of people coming to the US border was at historic lows by the end of the Obama administration. Under President Trump, they increased to levels not seen since 2007, and only last month came back down to the monthly level seen at the end of the Obama administration,” she said.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/politics/trump-campaign-ad-world-series-illegal-immigration-half/index.html
From NPR
“Most undocumented immigrants didn’t enter this country through Tijuana, where news cameras have captured images of thousands of immigrants seeking refuge during recent months.
And they didn’t enter near the border town of McAllen, Texas, which the president visited Thursday during the 20th day of a partial government shutdown fought over constructing additional barriers on the Southern border.
When it comes to people in the country without proper documentation, the majority of them didn’t cross the Mexican border at all. Most of them came to the United States legally — but then don’t leave.
About 700,000 travelers to the United States overstayed their visas in fiscal 2017, the most recent year for which the Department of Homeland Security has published figures. DHS estimated that, as of Sept. 30, 2017, the end of that fiscal year, more than 600,000 of those travelers were still in the U.S. ”
They say that if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it. If I am wrong prove me wrong.
As to National ID card, I am the one that suggested that as well as requirment of E-Verify for everyone.
Pingback: More early data from State Rep districts – Off the Kuff