It's Official: Democrats Have Lost the Future in Texas (for Now)

A week ago, I published a story about the Texas Republican Party's outreach to non-white, traditionally Democratic voters—especially Latino voters in the Rio Grande valley. Battleground Texas, which had been in the field for most of a year, was not fond of the story, and pushed back with data about the inroads it had made by flooding the state with organizers, giving Wendy Davis the sort of ground game that previous candidates never had. Jeremy Bird, the founder-turned-senior adviser of the group, explained in a memo that the turnout was proving Battleground right. Texas was changing. The map was turning purple.

The Greg Abbott campaign pushed right back, with seemingly superior math. "We have compiled the final turnout totals from 13 of the top 15 counties, and they show turnout more than 2% lower than in 2010," the campaign told Karen Tumulty.