2016 United States presidential election in Texas


The 2016 United States presidential election in Texas took place on November 8, 2016 as part of the 2016 United States presidential election in the U. S. state of Texas.
Texas was won by Republican Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence by a 9% margin over Democrats Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. The Lone Star State assigned its 38 Electoral College votes to the state's popular vote winner, but two faithless electors chose other candidates, making Texas the only state in 2016 to give Trump fewer than the assigned electoral votes.
When the electoral college met on December 19, 2016, only 36 out of the 38 electors voted for Trump for president. Two electors defected, Christopher Suprun to Ohio Governor John Kasich, and the other to Congressman Ron Paul. For Vice President, 37 electors voted for Pence, Suprun again defecting, to Carly Fiorina. This would also be the first time since Gerald Ford lost a Washington state electoral vote to fellow Republican Ronald Reagan in 1976, when a Republican presidential candidate would lose a pledged vote via a faithless elector. Additionally, this would also be the first time since 1972, when the winning Republican candidate would lose an electoral vote, when Richard Nixon lost a Virginia electoral vote to Libertarian third party candidate John Hospers.
The primary of March 1, 2016 included the Green Party, in addition to the two major parties.
Texas was one of the eleven states where Hillary Clinton improved on Barack Obama's performance in 2012. Clinton lost Texas by a smaller margin than any Democrat since 1996, which analysts attributed to ongoing demographic changes, although other analysts cite evidence suggesting the real reason was Trump losing ground with college-educated white voters. Trump's campaign became the tenth Republican campaign in a row to win Texas, beginning with Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign for presidency.
Had Clinton won Texas, she would have won the election 270 to 268, the narrowest possible margin for an electoral college victory. However, assuming that all 7 faithless electors would be the same, this would have meant they would have defected from Clinton, leaving no candidate with a majority, and Trump, Clinton, and Colin Powell would have faced off in a contingent election in the House.

Democratic primary

The Texas Democratic Party held their state's primary in concurrence with the other Super Tuesday contests on March 1. Eight candidates appeared on the ballot, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, dropped-out candidate Martin O'Malley and five minor candidates The Texas Democratic primary had 251 delegates to the Democratic National Convention: 222 pledged delegates and 29 super delegates. 145 delegates were allocated proportionally based on the results in the state's 31 senatorial districts. The other 77 pledged delegates were allocated proportionally based on the statewide popular vote.

Results

Republican primary

Debates and forums

February 24, 2016 – Houston, Texas
Megyn Kelly hosted a two-hour town hall event on The Kelly File with Kasich, Cruz, Rubio, and Carson in attendance. Trump did not participate in the forum.
February 25, 2016 – Houston, Texas
CandidateAirtimePolls
Trump30:2333.6%
Cruz19:5120.4%
Rubio16:4816.4%
Kasich17:369.8%
Carson10:157.4%

After the caucus in Nevada, the tenth debate was held at the University of Houston in Houston and broadcast by CNN as its third of four debates, in conjunction with Telemundo. The debate aired five days before 14 states voted on Super Tuesday, March 1. While the debate was to be held in partnership with Telemundo's English-language counterpart NBC, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus announced on October 30, 2015, that it had suspended the partnership in response to CNBC's "bad faith" in handling the October 28, 2015, debate. On January 18, 2016, the RNC announced that CNN would replace NBC News as the main host of the debate, in partnership with Telemundo and Salem Communications. The debate was shifted a day earlier at the same time. National Review was disinvited by the Republican National Committee from co-hosting the debate over its criticism of GOP front-runner Donald Trump. On February 19, the criteria for invitation to the debate was announced: in addition to having official statements of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission and accepting the rules of the debate, candidates must have received at least 5% support in one of the first four election contests held in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. By these criteria, all five remaining candidates, Carson, Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, and Trump, qualified for invitation to the debate. The 155 delegates to the Republican National Convention were allocated in this way. 108 delegates are allocated by congressional district; 3 per district. If a candidate gets over 50% of the vote in a congressional district; they would win all of the district's 3 delegates. If no one had a majority and one candidate had at least 20% of the vote, the candidate winning the plurality would get 2 delegates and the candidate in second place would get 1 delegate. If nobody receives at least 20% of the vote, the top 3 vote-getters each get 1 delegate. There were another 47 at-large delegates. If someone received more than 50% of the vote, they would get all of the at-large delegates. If no one got more than 50% of the vote and there were at least 2 candidates that got over 20% of the vote, the delegates would be allocated proportionally among the candidates receiving more than 20% of the vote. If only one candidate got over 20% of the vote and not a majority, the delegates would be allocated between the candidate that got over 20% of the vote and the candidate who received the 2nd most votes. If no candidate got 20%, they would allocate all of the 47 at-large delegates proportionally.

Results

Green Party convention

The Texas Green Party held its party caucuses at conventions at the precinct level on March 8, the county level on March 12, and the district level on March 19, leading up to the state nominating convention in Grey Forest, Texas on April 9 and 10.
On April 10 it was announced that Jill Stein had won the state convention.

General election

Polling

Demographics

The last time Texas voted for a Democratic candidate was the 1976 Presidential election when Jimmy Carter won 51.14% of the popular vote. Hispanic participation can create a very interesting and unpredictable outcome, especially on the Democratic statewide tickets since they lean heavily Democratic. The Hispanic turnout has increased by approximately 200,000 for each and every presidential election since 2000.

Predictions

The following are final 2016 predictions from various organizations for Texas as of Election Day.
  1. Los Angeles Times: Leans Trump
  2. CNN: Solid Trump
  3. Sabato's Crystal Ball: Solid Trump
  4. NBC: Leans Trump
  5. Electoral-vote.com: Leans Trump
  6. RealClearPolitics: Leans Trump
  7. Fox News: Leans Trump
  8. ABC: Solid Trump

    Results

The voting age population was 19,307,355, of which 15,101,087 were registered to vote. Turnout was 8,969,226, which is 46.45% of the voting age population and 59.39% of registered voters.
Thirteen candidates received write-in votes, of which the large majority went to Evan McMullin.

By county

By congressional district

Trump won 22 of 36 congressional districts
DistrictTrumpClintonRepresentative
72%25%Louie Gohmert
52%43%Ted Poe
54%40%Sam Johnson
75%22%John Ratcliffe
63%34%Jeb Hensarling
54%42%Joe Barton
47%48%John Culberson
72%24%Kevin Brady
18%79%Al Green
52%43%Michael McCaul
78%19%Mike Conaway
62%33%Kay Granger
80%17%Mac Thornberry
58%38%Randy Weber
40%56%Rubén Hinojosa
40%56%Vicente Gonzalez
27%67%Beto O'Rourke
56%38%Bill Flores
20%76%Sheila Jackson Lee
72%23%Randy Neugebauer
72%23%Jodey Arrington
34%60%Joaquín Castro
52%42%Lamar Smith
52%44%Pete Olson
46%49%Will Hurd
51%43%Kenny Marchant
55%40%Roger Williams
60%34%Michael Burgess
60%36%Blake Farenthold
38%58%Henry Cuellar
25%71%Gene Green
18%79%Eddie Bernice Johnson
53%40%John Carter
47%48%Pete Sessions
24%73%Marc Veasey
38%59%Filemon Vela Jr.
30%64%Lloyd Doggett
72%25%Brian Babin

Counties that swung from Democratic to Republican

While he continued the Republican 10-cycle winning streak in Texas, Trump's winning margin was down from Mitt Romney's 16% in 2012 to 8.99%, a 7.01% drop, making 2016 the closest Democrats had come to winning Texas since 1996. The surge in Democratic votes can partly be attributed to a growing population of Hispanics/Latinos, Trump’s relatively weak performance with college-educated white voters, and the growth of cities and their respective suburbs in the Texas Triangle region, which are heavily populated with both college-educated voters and minorities and thus swung more Democratic compared to 2012. These were Clinton's main sources of votes. She swept the Rio Grande region counties, such as El Paso, Webb, Hidalgo and Cameron as they have sizable Hispanic populations. Clinton also took the highly liberal and fast growing Travis County, as well as the urban and minority-heavy counties of Bexar, Dallas, and Harris County, where she turned the historically thin vote margins of previous cycles in the latter into a 12-point lead. Clinton also won suburban Fort Bend County for the first time since Texas native Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, which was attributed to the county's large immigrant population and negative perception of Trump by female Republican voters. Trump on the other hand narrowly flipped Jefferson County in East Texas, becoming the first Republican since Richard Nixon in 1972 to win the county. Places that had large numbers of young voters in the state were a stronghold for Clinton as well. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick suggested that Trump's relatively small margin of victory could have been largely due to many moderate Republican voters who had supported Romney in 2012 staying home. In an interview conducted the morning after the election, Patrick said in reference to these voters, "Had they turned out, he would've been in the low teens".
In total, Clinton beat Trump in 27 counties by a total of 883,819 votes, and had the best percentage performance than any other Democrat running statewide. Conversely, Trump, who won 227 of the state's 254 counties, got the smallest percentage of the vote than all other Republicans running in the state.