Real Clear Politics No Toss Up Map with Biden Beating Trump 353-185 in Electoral College

Fall Forecast Has Texas House with 13 More Dems
Barring Dramatic Trump Surge at Top of the Ticket

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor
September 25, 2020

Texas Competitive Races in General Election

Texas Congress Races to Watch Fall Forecast

Texas is tilting slightly red in the eyes of the oddsmakers before an election that could be wildly unpredictable with Democrats in position to seize control of the west wing of the statehouse if the race at the top of the ticket is as close here as the pollsters have been finding it in recent weeks.

The election appears to be playing out along party lines based on the polling that shows President Donald Trump leading Democrat Joe Biden in Texas by 2 or 3 percentage points with U.S. Senator John Cornyn up by twice as much against Democratic challenger MJ Hegar in the second contest on the fall ballot here..

Based on conventional political theory, Trump would probably need to be winning by a bigger margin here for the GOP to keep the Democrats at bay in their quest for a critical Texas House majority when the Legislature undertakes redistricting in 2021. Texas Democrats made substantial down-ballot gains in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary Clinton here by 9 points - the lowest share for a Republican presidential nominee here in 20 years. The Democrats flipped a dozen state House seats two years ago in Trump's long and stormy shadow two years ago.

The Capitol Inside crystal ball has never been this fogged up as a consequence of the monumental effect that the coronavirus crisis could have on the outcome of the general election on November 3. But the cloud still appears to have a blue lining with a scaled-back forecast that has the Democrats taking the Texas House back with a net gain of 13 seats based on a myriad of factors that keep changing every day. The Democrats who have 67 seats now in a lower chamber with 150 would be running the show west of the rotunda in Austin in 2021 with an 80-70 majority if the baker's dozen pick up projection panned out.

The outlook on the Texas congressional battlefield has the Democrats wrestling five seats away from the GOP - more than double the number they turned blue in 2018 with the ouster of two longtime incumbent U.S. House Republicans here. That would give the major parties an 18-18 split in the congressional delegation in the Lone Star State.

The Democrats here have more cause for optimism than ever with a record increase of nearly 1.6 million registered voters in Texas where Secretary of State Ruth Hughs pegged the total three days ago at more than 16.6 million with the opportunity for more to sign up before the deadline on October 5.

No incumbent president has ever done more in a single election year to wrecks the odds for re-election than Trump has managed to do with his routine dismissing of the pandemic as a partisan hoax that he promised to end by Easter. More than 203,000 Americans have died with COVID-19 infections on Trump's watch in the past seven months in a country where 7 million people have tested positive for the disease.

The nation that Trump vowed to make great again has been more bitterly divided and torn apart with social unrest that it had been at any point since the Civil War in the 1800s. The protests and rioting that erupted this summer in a every major city in the USA were triggered and fueled by Trump with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis as the match in the gasoline can.

With the economy that had been booming in the gutter for most of 2020, Trump has replaced that central campaign theme with a message that revolves on a violent anarchist mob tearing down every historical monument in sight in hopes of turning suburbs into socialist utopias. While it may be hard to believe that many Trump loyalists are buying into the fantasy imagery, the possibility of an election being close enough for the U.S. Supreme Court to have to decide if the president's latest prediction is accurate shows that a significant number of traditional GOP voters are planning to vote their party at the polls this fall. That has been apparent in polls that show that a majority of the people who plan to vote for Trump do not think he's a good person.

While the Democrats seem to have the lion's share of advantages in Texas and beyond with the vote rapidly approaching, the GOP could have a down-ballot seawall to some degree here with U.S. John Cornyn as a slight favorite in a bout with Hegar. The elimination of straight-ticket voting last year could give the Republicans a boost here as well this fall.

The U.S. Senate race in Texas has been shifted from toss up to leans GOP. But the forecast here still has the presidential competition as a coin flip in Texas despite Trump's thin lead in independent polling on the nation's second largest state.