The Biggest Hurdle For Beto O'Rourke In Texas Is Turning Out Latino Voters

Style Magazine Newswire | 10/5/2018, 8:05 p.m.
The Texas Senate race wasn't supposed to be competitive this year. But thanks to an imaginative campaign, Beto O'Rourke has …
Beto O'Rourke

Source:npr.org

The Texas Senate race wasn't supposed to be competitive this year. But thanks to an imaginative campaign, Beto O'Rourke has energized Democrats, drawing huge crowds and raising tens of millions of dollars in what was initially seen as a long-shot bid to defeat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. While polls show a single-digit race, O'Rourke will need a transformed electorate in order to win in Texas, where no Democrat has prevailed in a statewide race in almost a quarter-century. Specifically, O'Rourke needs to get dramatically more Latinos to show up to the polls in a state where Latinos have far less political clout than their demographic weight would suggest. Voter registration data suggests O'Rourke's campaign and Texas Democrats may not be pulling in enough new voters to offset Republicans' structural advantages in the state. Texas has a history of very low voter participation.

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