Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) just predicted that the national GOP is headed for the “waste bin of history” because our whole country is becoming like his Golden State. Now come new census estimates that may prove him a prophet: Texas, a must-win state for Republicans in presidential elections, is experiencing demographic change that will eventually turn it left.
Non-Hispanic whites are currently still a plurality in Texas. But this will soon change owing to, among other demographic phenomena, the state having gained nine new Hispanics for every one new non-Hispanic white in 2018. As the Texas Tribune reports:
With Hispanics expected to become the largest population group in Texas as soon as 2022, new population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau showed the Hispanic population climbed to nearly 11.4 million — an annual gain of 214,736 through July 2018 and an increase of 1.9 million since 2010.
The white population, meanwhile, grew by just 24,075 last year. Texas still has a bigger white population — up to 11.9 million last year — but it has only grown by roughly 484,000 since 2010. The white population’s growth has been so sluggish this decade that it barely surpassed total growth among Asian Texans, who make up a tiny share of the total population, in the same time period.
Asian-descent Texans’ population has actually increased the most percentagewise — 49 percent since 2010. Other major groups’ percentage increases since that year are Hispanics, 20; blacks, 19; and whites, 4.
This is significant not just because it perhaps means a more interesting panoply of restaurants, but because racial/ethnic identification strongly correlates with voting patterns. While Republicans derive approximately 90 percent of their votes from non-Hispanic whites — a group whose population share is shrinking nationwide — the “minority” groups in question cast ballots for Democrats by about 70 to 90 percent margins.
This demographic change is particularly impactful in regard to Texas because it is a GOP must-win in presidential contests. Consider: The Democrats already have as sure wins three of the five states offering the most electoral votes: California, 55; New York, 29; and Illinois, 20. Add to that 104 total other sure-win states, and the Democrats have well more than half the number necessary, which is 270, to win presidential elections.
Moreover, add a decent percentage of Democrat-leaning states, and you’ll know why it has recently been said that the Republicans have “a narrow path to the White House.” Now, remove Texas from the GOP column, and, well, the Grand Old Party will be the Grand Dead Party.
I discuss this more in-depth in my 2012 piece “Does the GOP’s Demographic Death Spiral End in a Texas Graveyard?” But here’s the simplest way to relate the truth in question: Without Texas, Donald Trump in 2016 and G.W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 would have lost. Another way of putting it is: The Republicans wouldn’t have won a presidential election in 30 years — not since 1988.
And they won’t win one ever again if Texas is flipped. (Note here: For whatever it’s worth, some polls have shown Joe Biden leading President Trump in Texas.)
By the way, all this means is that Texas will have gone the way of once-Republican California and erstwhile swing states Illinois and New Jersey — and for largely the same reason.
That reason is what some leftists, using phraseology that can get conservatives branded Racist™, have called “the browning of America.” It’s the result of population-replacement politics, a.k.a. immigration, a.k.a. what credulous conservatives call something they “believe in” but “just want done legally” (just like suicide being okay if it’s government-sanctioned euthanasia.)
This demographic upheaval was neither inevitable nor accidental. Rather, it’s the result of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. Introduced in Congress by Representative Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.) and Senator Philip Hart (D-Mich.) and pushed aggressively by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), it radically transformed our immigration regime, prioritizing Third World newcomers over Westerners for the first time. The result?
Since 1968, 85 to 90 percent of our immigrants have hailed from the Third World.
(Not surprisingly, Texas’ 2018 demographic change mirrors this almost perfectly.)
Interestingly, many 1960s liberals tacitly acknowledged demographic upheaval’s negative character. A good example is how Ted Kennedy defended the ’65 immigration bill not by proclaiming “Diversity is our strength!” but by claiming on the Senate floor that it would “not upset the ethnic mix of our society.” (In fact, everything he asserted — such as how “our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually” from the “most populated and economically deprived nations” — was the precise opposite of what came to pass.)
But those days are long gone. Ever since the Democrats realized they could import new voters, they’ve aimed to make the flood one of biblical proportions. I mean, do you really think the profligates in Congress aren’t securing the border because they don’t want to spend one half of one percent of the budget on a wall?
Anyway, the bottom line is that immigration is messing with Texas — and the whole nation. Most of it is all nice and legal, too.
Photo: Hundley_Photography / iStock / Getty Images Plus
