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There are just over 770,000 Mormons in California. That accounts for just 1.97% of California's population, so I doubt they have all that much of an influence there.
And, as I said earlier, LDS church members make up about the same percentage of Texas' population said earlier.
So, when you take into account that church membership includes children and Mormons who may not be registered Republicans, it's probably unlikely that they have a significant influence in either state's election results.
In Texas the white educated vote while still strong for Trump trended Democratic, as it did in many other parts of the country. The white working class vote in Texas did trend Trump as well as it did nationwide. However, in Texas that voting bloc was already so Republican, it didn't have as much to move as elsewhere.
Overall, the reason the State moved was because of the metro areas in the state and it's suburbs. Even the heavily GOP ones, were less so than.in the past. With that being said Texas is still a long way from being competitive, though it could have an impact on some districts
Helpful analysis. Thank you. Do you happen to know what was so different in 2012, when Romney won Texas by 15% compared to Trump only carrying the state by 2% four years later?
I think that's a much more interesting - and important - question than a state which typically votes blue voting blue yet again.
Helpful analysis. Thank you. Do you happen to know what was so different in 2012, when Romney won Texas by 15% compared to Trump only carrying the state by 2% four years later?
I think that's a much more interesting - and important - question than a state which typically votes blue voting blue yet again.
Trump won Texas 52-43%, so not by just 2%.
To answer your question though, Texas has a lot of people who are educated, but still actually pretty conservative. They will vote for people like Romney, but fewer could bring themselves to vote for Trump. While Romney did do better with non-college-graduate whites than with college-graduate whites, the discrepancy was far more significant in 2016 than in 2012. Trump did much better than Romney among non-college-graduate whites, causing a large number of states to shift to him, but Trump did much worse than Romney among educated whites. Texas is one of a relatively small number of states that has more college-graduate white voters than non-college-graduate white voters, so the lower margin makes sense.
I do not agree with illinoisphotographer. Texas has a good number of educated conservatives who may not vote for a candidate like Trump, but would still vote for other Republicans. I think it depends on the type of candidate Republicans run in the future.
To answer your question though, Texas has a lot of people who are educated, but still actually pretty conservative. They will vote for people like Romney, but fewer could bring themselves to vote for Trump. While Romney did do better with non-college-graduate whites than with college-graduate whites, the discrepancy was far more significant in 2016 than in 2012. Trump did much better than Romney among non-college-graduate whites, causing a large number of states to shift to him, but Trump did much worse than Romney among educated whites. Texas is one of a relatively small number of states that has more college-graduate white voters than non-college-graduate white voters, so the lower margin makes sense.
I do not agree with illinoisphotographer. Texas has a good number of educated conservatives who may not vote for a candidate like Trump, but would still vote for other Republicans. I think it depends on the type of candidate Republicans run in the future.
Thanks for the correction. Also, thanks for the thoughtful analysis. It's very helpful.
I think the bolded part is true in California too, in a slightly different way. We're reached a point where we have more unaffiliated voters than registered Republicans, so the key to a Republican win here in future elections will also come down to the Republicans choosing a candidate who can send a clear message that appeals to those unaffiliated voters.
I thought Trump missed an opportunity here; a sizable portion of Sanders supporters in California were unaffiliated voters looking for an anti-establishment candidate. After the democrats cut Sanders off at the knee, there was a *chance* that those voters might have been pulled over to Trump, but, frankly, Trump ditched California like a bride at the altar.
Worse, a certain subset of his supporters have been bashing California like it is their only job; all that is doing is driving people here, including some Republicans, further away. If anyone wants to know how the Republicans could possibly win in California in future presidential elections, it's pretty simple: find a candidate who treats our state with some respect and call off the idiots who lump 39 million people as "liberals."
Now that California's presidential primary is going to be moved up to the first week of March instead of June, it will be interesting to see if future candidates - Republicans, Democrats, and possibly third party -- feel a little differently about giving California some love early in the process. We'll see.
Helpful analysis. Thank you. Do you happen to know what was so different in 2012, when Romney won Texas by 15% compared to Trump only carrying the state by 2% four years later?
I think that's a much more interesting - and important - question than a state which typically votes blue voting blue yet again.
It did move, but not that much, Romney won it by 16, Trump won it by 9. It was still a 7 point swing, and a 9 point trend compared to the national average. As far as what was so different, Texas has continued to get more diverse, same with the metro areas, combined with more educated whites that trended away from Trump. Rural working class whites were already so staunchly Republican in Texas there wasn't much more room for them to move to attempt to cancel out the trends elsewhere
Harris County (Houston and inner suburbs) was won by Obama by ,1% in 2012, Clinton won it by 12.3%
Fort Bend (suburban Houston) was won by Romney by 6.8% in 2012, Clinton won it by 6.7% in 2016
Dallas County (Dallas and inner burbs) won by Obama by 15.4 in 2012, Clinton won it by 25.8 in 2016)
Tarrant County (Forth Worth) won by Romney by 15.7, Trump won it by 8.6
Denton County (dallas suburbs) won by Romney by 31.6, Trump won it by 20
Collin County (Dallas suburbs) on by Romney by 31.5, Trump won by 16.6%
Travis County (Austin and inner suburbs) Obama by 23.9, Clinton by 38.6
Williamson county (Austin suburbs) Romney 19.5, Trump 9.6
Bexar County (San Antonio metro) Obama by 4.5, Clinton by 13.3
All of them are heavily populated counties in the state, some are uber Republican areas where the GOP runs up massive margins. They still won some of them by decent margins, but considerably smaller than in the past.
Since you live in Texas, let me ask you this: why do you think Trump only pulled 52% of the votes in Texas? I mean, he won Texas, but Texas sure had an awful lot of Clinton supporters (43% of voters).
So, why not ask on the Texas forum why Trump didn't get a bigger majority in your state?
That might be more helpful to you as a (presumed) Texas voter than worrying about a place where you don't live and can't vote.
By the way, it might also interest you to know that members of the LDS church make up about the same percentage of the population in your state (Texas) as they do in California. In both cases, less than 2%. Since that includes children, and not all Mormons vote Republican, it seems doubtful that "Mormons make up an important part of the GOP base" in either state.
I appreciate your reputation points, but I don’t appreciate you implying that I have no right to inquire about California because I don’t live there. I don’t mean to sound rude, but I just don’t like that type of stuff coming my way. I like to ask questions about topics that interest me. That being said, I do like civil discussion and apologize for any heat I delivered earlier.
Even worse. Besides, illegals voted for their best interests.
Clinton received 4,269,978 more votes in California than Trump.
There are approximately 2.3 million illegals in California. That number includes children who can't vote.
So, even if every single illegal alien in California including children somehow managed to vote in the 2016 election, that wouldn't even come close to accounting for the difference in the number of votes between Trump and Clinton.
And, according to Pew Research, the percentage of the population that is illegal in Texas is the same as in California (approximately 6% in both). So, by your reasoning, why didn't Clinton win by a landslide in Texas too?
As I said earlier, a major reason I believe Trump didn't have a shot at winning California was because he didn't appeal to enough "no party preference" voters. They make up a quarter of California voters - neither of the two major parties can pull a majority without getting a sizable chunk of the no party voters on board.
It may be tempting to call them all "liberals" but they aren't. Those voters dislike BOTH parties, so an anti-establishment candidate like Trump could --and should -- have pulled a larger portion of those voters if he had conveyed a message that resonated with that group. He didn't, and that's partially why he lost by a landslide in California - failure to win over the no party voters with the right message.
But, the information about Texas that thoughtful posters have offered in this thread has helped me to see that some of the demographic similarities between our two states (and no, I'm not talking about illegals voting) also probably played a part in the results here.
In particular, Smash255's explanation of how the demographics in Texas are shifting was helpful in this regard, because a lot of the same elements are increasingly at play here in California. And just like Trump's message didn't resonate with certain types of voters in Texas, it probably didn't resonate with those same types of voters here either. Comparative politics can sometimes shed light on factors that aren't apparent if you're only looking at one state.
Thank you to all who shared thoughtful and factual posts in this thread. I really appreciate it, and have learned a lot from reading your replies.
There was only one county in California in which Trump did better than Romney - Lake County, an overwhelmingly white rural county in Northern CA (recently afflicted by the fires)
Everywhere else in the state he did worse.
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