Early Voting is happening in Texas at record rates. Yay! But when the reports come out it helps to understand the State a bit. The above map is for the Texas Triangle. It represents the majority of the Texas population. The big blob in the bottom right is Greater Houston with Harris and Fort Bend Counties as part of the MSA. I-45 is the highway that goes north to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. It has Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Denton Counties in its MSA. Follow I-35 to the southwest out of DFW and it goes through Austin (Travis County) and San Antonio (Bexar County). Then I-10 to the east completes the Triangle.
The counties I actually named are part of the Top Ten counties in Texas by population. Hidalgo and El Paso are in the Valley and West Texas respectively.
As results come in keep in mind where the totals are coming from.
This the minority density map for Dallas and Tarrant Counties. Shades of gray are for census tracts under 50% minority and the blue are 50 to 80% and the bright pink is over 80% minority population.
This is the Austin and San Antonio MSAs. Again they include Travis and Bexar Counties.
This is another map of the Houston area with Fort Bend County shown. Montgomery, Brazoria, and Galveston Counties are part of the MSA, but not shown here.
Here is a map of Texas with the minority density showing. The reason for putting all of these out here is simple: Texas is a majority-minority state. This map shows the counties, but the population is in census tracts. The tighter the clusters, the higher the population density.
When people ask why we think the turnout figures help Democrats, the large minority population is why. African-Americans are historically the best Democratic voting block. According to several polls, Asian-Americans and Latinos are getting there.
I’ll leave with two more maps: El Paso out in West Texas and a map of South Texas that has Corpus Christi, the Valley, and Laredo in it. Corpus Christi is in Nueces County, El Paso is in El Paso County, and the Valley has Hidalgo and Cameron Counties in it.
Turning Texas Blue has been a dream for many of us, but it is possible. Getting people to vote is only part one, keeping them engaged is the next part. Tying Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Ted Cruz to Donald Trump in the 2018 campaign is essential. They did half the work for us already.
I played with some age filters and other stuff on these maps and they come out a mess. I changed the color contrast to better see the minority areas. Labels come out a mess also.
This is Texas that few see, but it just might shock everyone on Nov 8.