Why do not more Texans vote?

Texas was almost the last US state in terms of voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election. Few were surprised by this, given the recent history of voting in the Lone Star State. What explains our dismal performance? Why did a state like Florida, with 5 million fewer residents than Texas, get 600,000 more votes in the 2016 general election?

And will things change?

In fact, there are signs of change underway this year, but such a change would require a long history of low civic engagement, a situation that I believe is the result of a number of interrelated factors, some of which began even before the Texas does not become a state. .

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First, Texas was colonized in the 1820s and 1830s by white farmers and slave owners, who brought with them the ideals of the traditional political culture that dominated the southeastern states.

As Daniel J. Elazar, a specialist in American federalism in the twentieth century, pointed out, this culture included a paternalistic and elitist conception of the Commonwealth that "accepts the government as an actor playing a positive role in the community, but it does not do so. strives to limit this role to maintaining the maintenance of the existing social order ".

Those who do not have a specific role to play in politics are not supposed to be citizens, even in a minimal way, Elazar said. As a result, "in many cases, they are not even supposed to vote".

Our system of single-party dominance in Texas elections reinforced this traditionalist culture. From the 1870s to the 1960s, Texas was a one-party democratic state. Since the early 90's, it's a one-party Republican state.

As the minority party has little chance of winning in the general elections, voter turnout is generally low in the presidential elections (about 60% of registered voters actually went to the polls in 2012 and 2016) and very low in the elections mid-term, when the most important state offices, such as governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, are decided. Approximately 34% of Texas registered electors participated in the 2014 ballot.

Clearly, the dominant party – the long-standing Democrats, now replaced by the GOP – had little reason to change a system that regularly elects candidates to all positions in the state.

With Republican rule threatened by the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the Texan people, recent Republican-controlled legislatures have used their power to slow down any transition to the status quo by enacting strict voter identification laws, in part through the re-election. Opposition to efforts to facilitate registration and voting for Texans and gerrymandering congressional and state legislative maps in order to minimize the political opportunities of Democratic candidates.

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These efforts have borne fruit since the Democrats hold only 55 out of 150 seats, 10 out of 31 seats in the Senate and 11 out of 36 seats in the United States.

Given the Republican control of all the levers of power in Austin, as well as the reluctance of the federal courts to intervene in partisan political affairs, if the change were to occur in Texas, it should be motivated by the voters of the United States. ;State.

Many people are now registered in Texas – a record 15.6 million, announced the Texas Secretary of State – but the voter turnout among voters is among the lowest in the country. Will this change in 2018?

Perhaps.

The rise of Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016, which ensured the Republican nomination for president and defeated Hillary Clinton, has changed the game across the country. President Trump has scrambled the election eggs. Many white, blue-collar, and less educated Democrats turned to the Republican Party, while professionals trained in the growing suburban colleges turned to Democrats. And Trump's overthrow of the GOP's long-standing efforts to expand the party base by reaching fast-growing Latin American and Asian American communities will matter in Texas.

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This national dynamic makes Texas go from a deep red to a slightly more purplish hue, with pockets of blue in the suburbs like Fort Bend County. The mixed impact of President Trump in Texas with the surprising emergence of Beto O. Rourke as the highest-funded US Senate candidate, and we may finally have an important competitive election that can attract up to To 6 million Texans at the polls, fall.

Participation in national standards will still be pretty poor, but it will be much better than the $ 4.5 million we generally expect to vote. We will not be in the top 10 of the turnout in 2018, but we could be 35th. Will this improvement signal a shift towards more robust voter turnout in the future? We can not answer this question until we have gone through at least two other election cycles.

Richard Murray He is a political scientist at the University of Houston and director of sample surveys at the Hobby School of Public Affairs.

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