“It is not a question of if Texas will become a swing state, but when,” Matthew Dowd, an Austin-based political analyst who was a principal strategist for President George W. Bush. “Demography is inexorably pushing Texas from solid Republican state to swing state over time. And it is a serious problem for Republicans in putting together a winning electoral coalition as Texas does move to a swing state.”
Still, Republicans point to at least 102 reasons their partisan adversaries won’t succeed. That’s the number of consecutive victories they’ve had in statewide elections, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office, a streak that goes back to 1994. With that record of success, Republican Governor Rick Perry dismissed the Battleground Texas effort as a “pipe dream.”
That string won’t end any time soon, said Mike Baselice a Republican polling expert.
“Republicans are going to win all the statewide races in the next cycle in 2014 because the state leans 10 points more Republican than Democrat,” he said. And, if Republican candidates win about 35 percent of the Hispanic vote, at least for the near future, their lock on state offices will continue.
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