Texas straddles the 100th meridian. Eastern Texas is actually an extension of the Deep South: It is wooded, humid, has a large number of small towns and cities, and has some rural African American population. The rest of the state, however, is more like New Mexico or western Oklahoma. Much of the land is given over to ranching, and few votes are cast there.

Instead, votes are cast in the major metropolitan areas. In 2016, the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan areas combined for a majority of the vote in Texas. Donald Trump very nearly lost these areas for the GOP for first time in recent memory, receiving just 48% of the vote there. Despite winning the popular vote nationally by larger margins than Clinton, Barack Obama took just 43% of the vote here in 2012, and 45% during his landslide win in 2008…

Could a Democrat really win in 2020? It seems a stretch, but remember that Mitt Romney won Texas by 16 points, Donald Trump won by nine, and Cruz won by just three. These are not good trendlines for the GOP. States do shift their partisanship quickly at times. George H.W. Bush won New Hampshire by 26 points in 1988 and New Jersey by 14; in 1996 New Jersey went for Clinton by 18 points, while New Hampshire was a 10-point Clinton win. That same year, West Virginia was a 15-point Clinton win; eight years later George W. Bush won it by 13.