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Can Biden win Texas?
The Democrats haven’t won in Texas since 1976, but recent polling suggests the race in Texas is on a knife edge. Could this be the election where the Lone Star State goes blue?
Texas hasn’t been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976 and they haven’t elected a Democratic governor since 1990. At the last election it wasn’t even close in Texas — Trump won the state by a margin of 9 percentage points or 807,179 votes. Yet, if we look at the most recent polling in Texas, the numbers make it look like a swing state rather than a state that has given its electoral college votes to a Republican at every time of asking since Ronald Reagan carried the state in 1980.
The polling average has Trump’s lead down to +0.2 percentage points. This is within the margin of error, making Texas a ‘toss up’ state based on current polling averages. Furthermore, the current 7/4 odds given by the betting markets imply that the bookies think there is a 36% of Texas going blue in 2020, which is similar to the 30% odds given by The Economist’s 2020 election model. So, whilst most current predictions (with the notable exception of the Princeton Election Consortium) still have Texas in the Trump column, the polling is very close. Does this mean that Biden’s team…
