In the sun belt, Biden is trying to assemble a multiracial coalition of voters in fast-growing suburbs and urban centers like Houston and Phoenix that have seen drastic demographic changes in recent years. The Texas numbers, which President Trump easily won four years ago, look promising to him. More than 9.6 million ballots were cast, surpassing the total vote of the state in the 2016 presidential election, and Democrats believe this could offset the high turnout in rural parts of the state, where the energy for Trump remains high.
“Someone pressed the state fast-forward button,” said Albert Morales, senior political director of the Latino Decisions electoral bureau. “We didn’t expect it to be this early in the game.”
Still, every Republican presidential candidate since Bob Dole in 1996 has got about a third of the Latino votes nationwide – and some polls have found Trump has remained stable since 2016 or does better with Latinos, especially among working-class men. Voter turnout has lagged in rural South Texas, which is largely working-class and Latino, and some see this as a positive sign for Trump.
“Our energy and excitement is higher,” said Allen West, chairman of the Texas Republican Party.
With more than 32 million registered voters, Latinos are expected to be the largest group of color voters nationwide in the presidential election. While Republican Cuban Americans in South Florida tend to dominate the national political discourse, Latino voters are diverse and originated in a variety of countries including El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Colombia, as well as the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
In the Southwest, the vast majority of Latinos attribute their heritage to Mexico. But Latino voters have long been a lower political priority in Texas as national campaigns, if at all, hit Latino neighborhoods late in the election cycle. Although Latinos make up 30 percent of the electorate in Texas, only about 20 percent do so.
This year the energy has gushed from both camps, although neither Biden nor Trump fought in the state. But Biden’s runner-up, Kamala Harris, hosted three events there on Friday.
Nowhere was the excitement and excitement for these presidential elections as palpable as in Harris County, the third largest country with an estimated 4.7 million people. It’s home to Houston, and around 1.4 million ballots have been cast there, some in the wee hours of the morning at one of several polling stations that were open 24/7 for one day last week.
Ahead of an early polling station here on Friday, Angelica Razo, state director of the Mi Familia Vota Latino voter group, warmed up a crowd of volunteers for a performance by Rapper Common, saying, “We know the communities that have historically been overlooked are part of this historic turnout – they’re changing Harris County, they’re changing Texas. “
“I can’t say we’ve been to too many places where I’ve seen black, brown, white, Muslim people [together]”Common said to the cheering volunteers.” I just love to see it. “
Texas does not have an affiliate registry, and voting in the state is notoriously difficult. Therefore, it is difficult to know which party will benefit from the early vote. However, political organizers and campaigners said much of the high turnout here and across the state was driven by Latino voters who were disappointed with the Trump administration’s treatment of the coronavirus outbreak and the ensuing economic downturn. Many have also watched with concern the Republicans’ efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Bill, attributing an increase in racial and ethnic hatred against blacks and Latinos to Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and approach to immigration.
In particular, the number of young voters has reached a level never seen before. A younger generation of Latinos are growing up amid tough immigration policies that have made life difficult for their families, while fearing a rise in school shootings and global warming.
The potential gains for Biden even come as he struggled to win over Latino voters since the Democratic primary in which he lost that vote to Senator Bernie Sanders.
And yet the enthusiasm for Trump continues. In the final days of the early vote, Trump trains roamed the city and state, with trailers in trucks and other vehicles waving Trump pence flags. A caravan on Friday encircled a Biden bus outside Austin carrying campaign replacements on a freeway, forcing some campaign events to be canceled. Another Trump group circled a community center Thursday that blew up music and shouted into a PA system. Among them were Vietnamese Americans who feared a takeover by “socialist democrats” and Latinos who were worried about corruption.
When the emotions peaked, Liz Hanks, 39, and her 3-year-old daughter walked away uncomfortably. “It’s so controversial that you can’t even have a normal boring political rally,” she said when someone in the background yelled at the dispersing crowd, “I’m a Latina. I’m not oppressed.”
Republican Latinos are a small but vocal minority. Here, in the so-called Latino Bible Belt, Trump’s warnings about socialism do not arouse as much support for the president as the strong opposition to abortion among Latino evangelicals and conservative Catholics. Many also believe that Trump would do better for small businesses and the economy. Racism – although some had experienced it first-hand – was not a priority, nor was immigration.
“What I see is that many of them are first generation American citizens … maybe a different generation, they will think critically,” Hope Cruz, 64, a retired business owner, told Biden supporters in a school lot in Fort Bend County, a suburb of Houston, where the Biden bus and Trump train next stopped. It was once firmly Republican, but now it’s getting more politically mixed. And she and other Trump supporters tried to counter the event by blowing up Cuban salsa and waving huge Trump pence signs in front of military utility vehicles.
Tensions have increased as Republicans appear to be losing some of their hold on the state. Beto O’Rourke’s tight race against Republican Senator Ted Cruz in 2018 sparked the Texas Democrats’ long-standing search for new voters. This year, the high number of early votes comes despite – or perhaps because of – efforts by Republicans in Texas to make it difficult for people to register to vote and vote, they said.
As recently as last year, after halfway through 2018 when Latinos doubled their numbers in the elections, Republican officials attempted to remove tens of thousands of people from their electoral roll based on inaccurate Texan driver’s license data. In the midst of the pandemic, Republican Governor Greg Abbott refused to expand the voting by mail and limited the number of ballot boxes to one per district, even in sprawling Harris County.
And legal analysts believe that after election day, the state will be a hotbed for litigation from Republicans trying to turn out to vote. The state Supreme Court on Sunday blocked efforts by Republicans to cast 100,000 ballots in Harris County because they were cast at official roadside transit locations.
As Texas turns blue or approaches, national political campaigns may want to pay more attention to Latinos in Texas than in Florida next time around, Morales said.
“Anything in or near O’Rourke’s margin is a win to me,” said Morales. “It changed the country’s political landscape for at least a generation.”
Reach Jazmine Ulloa at jazmine.ulloa@globe.com or on Twitter: @jazmineulloa.
