Texas Democrats are trying to regroup after failing to make gains at nearly every level despite their belief they would turn the state blue during last week’s presidential election.
“I remember sitting [in] the office, putting my hands on my temples and saying, ‘what the f— is happening?'” Progress Texas executive director Ed Espinoza recalled of watching the votes come in on election night.
A Democrat strategist who worked on down-ballot races told the Hill it was “pretty clear at this point that we were wrong about what the environment would look like. And I don’t think it was just us.”
“Our polling showed the same thing national polling showed, and ultimately Republican polling too, which was that Trump was going to lose 7 to 10 points off of his 2016 margins in Texas and across the country. That didn’t happen,” the strategist explained.
President Trump made big gains in traditionally Democrat-held counties on or near the Texas border on November 3 while Joe Biden lost more counties than nearly any Democrat candidate in the state’s history, a political consultant told Breitbart News.
“There is a systematic bias in the Democrat world that pigeonholes people into voting certain ways,” said Dave Carney, chief political consultant for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “There is a belief that if more Latinos voted, more Democrats would get elected.”
Voters in the region turned out, thanks to President Trump delivering on his promises regarding economic growth and border security, according to Carney.
“Trump’s performance with Latino voters was impressive. In many counties, he doubled his 2016 turnout,” he noted.
In addition, Republicans kept their majority in the Texas House, maintained control of the Texas Senate, the Supreme Court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the Railroad Commission.
“They’re really good salesmen. But they’re clearly not using good data because they lose and they lose and they lose,” GOP strategist Corbin Casteel said of Democrats.
“Texas is absolutely still a red state, and all you need to do is look at all these contested House races that Democrats were spending all this money to try to flip,” Casteel concluded.
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