Voter Turnout and Changing Demographics in Texas
By: Rifaa Patel
Tags: Voter Registration, Democrats, Republicans, Texas, Voter Turnout

by Rifaa Patel

Texas historically has been one of the lowest states in voter turnout despite having a huge population. Texas voter turnout was record-breaking in the 2020 presidential election than it has been in the past 30 years. Texas saw a 60% increase in voter turnout and surpassed 9 million votes just in the early voting period, more than the total number of votes from 2016, according to Texas Tribune (Watkins). Texas has one of the lowest voter turnouts in the country, only 45. 6% of the eligible voters voted in 2018, considering the national average was 49.4%. The presidential race of 2016 showed the turnout to be 51.4% while the national average was 60.1% (Ramsey). Texas has been deemed a hard state to vote in, due to its strict rules and guidelines, like no automatic voter renewal, no same-day registration, and stricter mail-in and absentee ballot rules but despite that, I wanted to see the trends and patterns in Texas voter registration and turnout (Ramsey). 2018 midterm election saw record turnout overall, as shown in Table 1 below, so I decided to analyze selected election years and voter turnout during those years.

Table 1

The goal of the conducted research was to initially figure out if the increase in voter turnout and if it was due to the change in demographics or the result of a high scale election, or both. I narrowed the research down to voter registration and turnout by age and race under 30 years of age and compared voter registration and turnout in 2014, 2016, and 2018. As seen in Table 1, voter registration and turnout are higher in 2018, I chose to under 30 because this is groups where you can see the ideology of the following generations, I believe and since voter registration had been low I was interested in seeing which group could possibly have a higher turnout. The voter registration in these years has been going up and there is a significant increase in the turnout of the eligible registered voters. To answer my research question properly, I needed more data and narrowed down data, specific to demographics to analyze the cause for it. I decided to look at the voter turnout by race as well as and the first time voters by age to help understand the data more because I started researching more to better understand the reasoning and based on the initial research that I did I realized that the number of White voters is always high, so it would be beneficial to compare and contrast.

The voter registration by race shows a huge number of Caucasian voters in every election. In 2014, 76.60% of the eligible voters voted, in 2016, 50.30% of the voters voted, a huge fall from 2014, and in 2018 69.9% of the voters voted, an increase but still not as high as the turnout in 2014. While the number of Hispanic voters went up. In 2014, 12.7% of the eligible voters voted, in 2016 18% of the eligible voters voted, and in 2018 the number went up by .1% making it 18.1% of voters who voted. So while the Caucasian voters decreased the Hispanic voters increased, all of this data is shown in Table 3 below. The trend of the increase in Hispanic voters can be seen in the 2020 general election as there is a significant increase in voter turnout and registration. According to the Texas Secretary of State’s data 2020 Presidential election saw the highest voter turnout since 1992. The number of total voters has gone up 12% in 2016 (Cohen, Stracqualursi).

Table 3

Table 2

Going more further into the data and breaking it down by first-time voters by age, I can saw a significant increase in the age group 18–29 with 49.3% of new registered eligible voters. 2014 was 30.7% and 2016 was 36.4% (TargetSmart). When looked at the voter turnout in 2018 in the 18–29 age group is not that high as shown in Table 2 above. As seen in Table 4, there was no significant increase in voter turnout in females but it was higher than in men. There are high numbers of voter registration in different minority groups but the turnout doesn’t support those numbers. According to the KFF and data provided by them, 63.1% of Black voters were registered to vote in 2018 and 47.6% of the voters turned out to vote. The same trend can be seen in Hispanic voters, high registration and low turnout, 50.8% of voters registered and 34.4% of the voters turned out to vote. So, I think there is definitely an increase in voter turnout but it might just be because of the changing demographics, meaning more kids who are of voting age, and as Texas has a high Hispanic population, that would also be considered a change in demographics.

Table 4

Voter turnout in Texas has been increasing over the past elections and as shown in all the tables and analyzed above, there is a significant increase over the years. There was a significant increase in 2018 and my research leads me to believe that it was due to the shift in demographics in Texas, like new eligible voters and the Hispanic votes increasing over the years. High-scale elections do garner attention and motivate people to perform their civic duty but a significant change in demographics would lead me to believe that the high voter turnout was because of the shift in demographics. When broken down into parts, like race, age, gender, and new voter, it is clear that the shift in demographics does matter.

References:

“Voting and Voter Registration as a Share of the Voter Population, by Race/Ethnicity.” KFF, 22 May 2019, www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/voting-and-voter-registration-as-a-share-of-the-voter-population-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0

Cai, Mandi, and Shannon Najmabadi. “Democrats Hoped High Turnout Would Usher in a Blue Wave across Texas. It Didn’t.” The Texas Tribune, The Texas Tribune, 5 Nov. 2020, www.texastribune.org/2020/11/04/texas-voter-turnout-democrats/

Stracqualursi, Veronica. “Texas’ 2020 Early Voting Surpasses Total Turnout in 2016 Election.” CNN, Cable News Network, 30 Oct. 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/politics/texas-2020-early-vote/index.html

“TargetSmart Analysis Shows Strength of a Younger, More Diverse Electorate in Texas.” TargetSmart, 21 Mar. 2019, targetsmart.com/targetsmart-analysis-shows-strength-of-a-younger-more-diverse-electorate-in-texas/

University, Quinnipiac. “QU Poll Release Detail.” QU Poll, poll.qu.edu/texas/release-detail?ReleaseID=2601

“Latinos in the 2016 Election: Texas.” Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, 31 Dec. 2019, www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/fact-sheet/latinos-in-the-2016-election-texas/

Cai, Mandi, et al. “Texas Has Added 1.8 Million Registered Voters. Where They Are Shows How the State Has Become More Competitive.” The Texas Tribune, The Texas Tribune, 30 Oct. 2020, www.texastribune.org/2020/10/30/texas-toss-up-voters/

Ramsey, Ross. “Analysis: It’s Harder to Vote in Texas than in Any Other State.” The Texas Tribune, The Texas Tribune, 19 Oct. 2020, www.texastribune.org/2020/10/19/texas-voting-elections/