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Texas Democratic Party
February 22, 2021
To view the full 2020 Texas Election Data Analysis, click here.
Texas Democrats have a lot to be proud of in the 2020 election. With little national investment, President Biden became the closest Democrat to flip Texas at the Presidential level in 25 years. Texas Democrats came within 11,500 votes of flipping the Texas House, and we increased our vote total by 1.3 million voters — equating to the second-highest amount of growth in Democratic vote share in the country since 2012.
Still, Texas Democrats failed to reach our goals. Due to a surge in spending in the final months before the election and a willingness to knock doors in the midst of the pandemic, Republican registration outpaced Democratic registration efforts by 26,000 net votes over the course of the 2020 election cycle.
When we are able to reach folks and have genuine, human-to-human conversations whether on the phone or in person, we know voters are more likely to make their voice heard and vote for Texas Democrats. This is especially true of folks with limited voting histories or new voters. When we successfully engaged these newer or less consistent voters, they tended to have a 4-6% increase in their likelihood of turning out. However, our ability to reach voters was limited by the phone numbers we had access to. Our phonebanks failed to reach many Texans, but especially renters, younger folks, and folks of color.
Moving forward, the Texas Democratic Party is developing actionable plans to keep Texas on track to flip in 2022 and 2024. These plans include:
Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa issued the following statement:
“Texas is still the biggest battleground state in the country. The path forward for Texas Democrats is clear: we must continue to register voters and build the type of field operation that meets voters where they are.
“When it comes to Latino voters, analysis shows that Latino voters are core to the Texas Democratic Party. Latinos support Democrats over Republicans two to one in Texas. Republicans maxed out Latino Republicans while Latino Democrats stayed home. That must change and is central to our path to victory in Texas.
“More than anything, the analysis shows that Texas is still ripe for the taking in 2022 and 2024. We need sustained investment now to begin our efforts to flip the state. Now is not the time to abandon Texas, it is the time to double down and help us fund our efforts. Our path forward could not be more clear. We can flip the state and win statewide and local elections in Texas is now closer than ever for Texas Democrats.”
Texas Democratic Party CTO John Elson issued the following statement:
“Our data team is the best data team in the country. Our analysis shows that there are clear challenges for Texas Democrats, but it also shows a clear path forward. If we do the work and begin to invest in field and voter registration efforts now, we can close the gap and flip the state in the coming years.
“It is going to take an all-hands-on-deck effort, but Texas Democrats are still on track to flip the state. The lack of in-person campaigning in 2020 hurt Texas Democrats by not allowing us to identify persuadable voters, forcing us to rely on outdated phone information that did not account for the fundamental shift in the Texas electorate and hampered our GOTV efforts allowing Texas Republicans to beat us among late registering voters. These are all fixable issues.
“I thank our extraordinary Data Science Director Hudson Cavanagh for putting together this analysis and giving the Texas Democratic Party a clear mandate of where the Party needs to go. The time to invest in Texas is now and our time to flip the state is still right in front of us.”
In the first quarter of 2020 the Texas Democratic Party outlined detailed programs for voter registration, voter protection, organizing and data.
To do that, Texas Democrats are releasing the first-ever Texas Model developed in-house.
We are building the biggest Democratic movement this state has ever seen. By making innovative, unique investments, we built our own machine learning model that will help campaigns across the state prioritize their precious resources and time.
Our Texas partisanship model will allow us to predict the partisan affiliation of potential voters in Texas with an unprecedented degree of accuracy. We will identify and prioritize potential voters by leveraging machine-learning techniques and Texas-specific data.
The Texas Model will also answer one of the biggest organizing questions: which voters do we engage first?
The Answer: Our Texas Model
The leadership at the Texas Democratic Party recognized that in order to win, we must reimagine what our data team can do. They understood that by investing in our data infrastructure, we could build data tools that benefit every campaign, up and down the ballot.
One of these tools is the Texas Model: the first-ever state party-developed partisanship model.
By building a Texas-specific model, we were able to design for what makes the Texas electorate unique, such as our geographic diversity and our changing demographics.
The model helps us know who we need to engage to turn out the vote in November. This allows us to avoid spending resources re-identifying reliable Democrats and instead grow our coalition by focusing on those with uncertain partisanship. The scores are also fundamental to our persuasion efforts. We need to ask voters we are uncertain about which party they identify with and why. Our Texas model helps us implement targeted outreach more effectively.
The Texas Democratic Party decided we could not simply rely on off-the-shelf scores because Texas is different. No matter how brilliant the folks who built national models are, national trends do not necessarily apply to Texas. Our data team was only able to build the model thanks to those who spent hundreds of thousands of hours knocking doors, volunteering for phone banks, and organizing events. Without the data collected from this work, our Texas model could not exist.
What is a “partisanship score?”
A partisanship score is a number, typically from 0-100, that estimates the likelihood that an individual is a Democratic voter. The higher a voter’s number, the higher the likelihood that they’re a Democrat. For example, when a campaign is developing a get out the vote strategy, they might use this score to avoid spending time knocking on reliably Republican doors.
In machine learning, models are given a training set of “correct” answers that they then use to “learn” about trends. The closer the training set approximates the universe they’re trying to predict, the more accurate the predictions.
These scores and predictions are typically developed by national, third-party vendors, which assess the entire American electorate. However, Texas isn’t like any other state. Our candidates are different. Our districts are different. Our voters are different.
Our model estimates that between two-thirds and three-fourths of those who did not have scores from the national models are likely Democratic voters, who might otherwise have been missed.
Putting the Texas Model into action
The Texas Democratic Party and our partners across the state are working harder than ever to register millions of new voters across the state. But registering voters is not enough: we need to be engaging with as many of those new voters as possible. In order to figure out how to prioritize our get out the vote efforts between now and November, we need to have scores for every Texas voter.
The best way to test a model is by putting it to work in the field. Whether a campaign uses our score for targeting or not, every time they interact with a voter, we are getting invaluable data about whether our prediction for that voter was correct. We are also investing in a large-scale, randomized trial to validate our predictions, which will be invaluable in identifying areas where the model could be improved.
The biggest strength of building our own model is that whenever a Democratic campaign makes contact with a voter and records that respondent’s partisanship — or a variety of other useful data about a potential voter — our model learns more about that voter. Through this effort, campaigns up and down the ballot are contributing to a positive feedback cycle that will help power efforts to turn Texas blue in 2020 and all future election cycles.
As we register more voters across the state, we must engage with younger Texans and Texas of color, and we cannot afford to wait three months for other models to update their scores for newly registered voters.
We have been extensively testing our Texas Model using data from 2018. Our model has scores for 99.99% of registered voters and can be re-run less than a week after a voter file update. These scores help us target our get out the vote efforts for both seasoned voters and newly registered folks at the same time.
The Texas Model has a number of advantages compared to the national models built by national vendors:
As anybody who has ever knocked on doors knows, sometimes our predictions will be wrong. These “mistakes” will be fundamental to improving the performance of our model over time. We are working closely with campaigns and allies to gather feedback on the model, as well as providing detailed insight about how our model works under the hood to ensure that they remain logical and intuitive.
What does this mean for the future?
Our Texas model will allow us to invest and improve our model each cycle. One of the most powerful benefits of this approach is our ability to combine the insights of models built by our partners in a variety of ways. We can make additional models quickly and with confidence.
Our model will continue to learn from every voter we talk to throughout 2020. More observations mean more accurate predictions, not only for the voter we are speaking to, but the entire Texas electorate. For every door we knock, the better our targets become.
We believe our investment in developing and maintaining our own partisanship model will soon be standard practice in swing states across the country. When we flip Texas, the investments made in our data infrastructure will be impossible to ignore.
Simply put, this is how we win.
https://www.texasdemocrats.org/media/2020-series-lets-organize-texas-voters/
March 9, 2020
At the start of 2020, Texas Democrats unveiled our comprehensive, statewide Voter Expansion Program which details how we will register millions of new voters and expand opportunities for voters to participate in our democracy.
In partnership with the Voter Expansion team, the Texas Democratic Party is now launching a statewide Organizing Program that redefines what it means to organize in Texas. Through innovative, relational, and constituency driven organizing tactics, we will engage, train and mobilize volunteers in every corner of the state. We will expand the electorate, elect Democrats up and down the ticket in November, and create a lasting volunteer infrastructure that catalyzes community change and growth beyond 2020.
In order to set the stage for a new era of organizing in Texas, we will be first and foremost grounded in quality – quality experiences with voters, volunteers, staff, training, recruitment efforts, and quality relationships. Our organizing will be guided by clear values and united around a culture that puts volunteers and community members first. We will be informed, not burdened by the past, and we will approach every day and every interaction as an opportunity to organize.
We will invest early in places that traditionally have been forgotten or left behind. Our team will work collaboratively with the communities we serve, approach new situations with humility, and be transparent with our goals by soliciting feedback every step of the way. We recognize that there is no one size fits all approach to organizing in Texas, and are motivated to craft specific and effective programs that showcase what Democrats can accomplish when united around a shared belief that we can make history in 2020.
Phase 2: March 4 — June 7
We’ve developed an organizing timeline, broken into phases, each of which has a unique set of goals and intentions. In this series, we will primarily discuss the second phase of our organizing rollout. The milestones we reach and the successes we achieve during each phase will have a direct impact on the goals we set in the stages thereafter.
Phase 1: January 2020 through the Primary (March 3)
Phase 2: Primary through the State Convention (June 6)
Phase 3: State Convention through Labor Day (September 7)
Phase 4: Labor Day through the Voter Registration deadline (October 5)
Phase 5: Voter Registration through Election Day (November 3)
Voter Registration Programming
Critical to our path to victory is expanding the electorate. We have developed an array of programs that will set us up for success to accomplish just that. Some programs will be implemented across all of Texas and other programming will only be for certain constituencies or areas of the state.
In an effort to build strong community relationships across the state, Organizers will host Voter Registration Community Strategy Sessions. By meeting with community members in small groups to discuss the best ways to do voter registration in their particular part of Texas, Organizers and local leaders will have the opportunity to share ideas and come together collectively.
To scale up our voter registration effort, we are running an ambitious Volunteer Deputy Registrar Recruitment Program that recruits volunteer deputy registrars who are trained and certified to be able to officially register voters in their county. Volunteer deputy registrars are responsible for officially registering voters in the State of Texas. Appointed by county voter registrars, deputy registrars are tasked with helping increase voter registration across our great state.
We’ll boost the impact of those volunteer deputy registrars through our High Traffic Voter Registration Program. Organizers will recruit to build up voter registration volunteer teams that disperse throughout high traffic areas to maximize their collection of forms.
This intentional strategy will allow the organizing program to expand its efforts and will also equip community members with the tools and skills needed to organize their communities beyond November. By the end of phase two, the Organizing team will have recruited at least one new Volunteer Deputy Registrar in all 254 counties.
We will launch RegisterTexas a web-based platform that guides volunteers and organizers to blockwalk unregistered voters in targeted areas. The RegisterTexas platform will also highlight any voter we mail an application to register through our Democratic Movers registration program, making it easy for volunteers to remind those voters to mail in their applications. This tool will help the organizing program be even more efficient with resources and increase the number of voters we can register through blockwalking.
Finally, we will launch specific voter registration programs targeting communities that require earlier attention and more intensive relationship-building to organize effectively, such as our South Texas Voter Registration Program and Rural Voter Registration Program, and we will recruit Campus and High School Voter Registration Captains who will identify, build relationships with and train high school and college students to help with strategic initiatives at their school.
By the end of phase two, the Organizing team will have recruited at least one new Volunteer Deputy Registrar in all 254 counties.
Constituency Organizing Programming
The Constituency Organizing platform consists of six Organizers, each of whom focuses on building relationships with the AAPI, African American, Latinx, LGBTQ+, People with Disabilities and Gen-Z/Millennial constituencies. In phase two, Organizers are dedicated to building coalitions within their constituencies, developing partner relationships, and implementing constituency specific volunteer recruitment and engagement opportunities.
We will host multiple constituency based voter registration events per month with each event targeting a different sub-constituency. Organizers will train constituency specific Volunteer Leaders to lead events across the state. This will allow the team to increase their output and create an infrastructure of ambassadors to the Constituency Organizing program across Texas.
Constituency Organizers will also create Constituency Organizer Tool Kits containing resources and training materials to support our larger Organizing Program and to help volunteers working within their constituencies. These will include best practice one-pagers, handbooks, background information, and interactive training materials. For example, they will put together resources for how to do voter registration effectively in each community. We will share these resources with candidates, staff, and make them publically available on our website.
By building relationships with volunteers, voters, influencers, community leaders, and progressive organizations, our Constituency Organizers will create a diverse organizing infrastructure that empowers Texans in communities across Texas.
Community Partnership Programming
Above all else, we will continue to implement programs that showcase the strength of the Democratic movement across Texas.
Before the end of phase two, we will facilitate Organizing Meetings that will provide opportunities for organizing staff to introduce themselves, ask questions, learn from attendees, share parts of the phase two organizing plan, and solicit feedback in at least 100 counties across Texas.
We will also work with communities to produce bimonthly Days of Service in numerous regions across Texas that rally community members around a specific issue outside of volunteering for the Texas Democrats. Day of Service Activities can include cleaning a park or helping at a school and allow our program to give back to the areas where we are working and connect over the issues that matter most in 2020.
The focus of our organizing apparatus will be expansive; we plan to go beyond just working to elect Democrats. We want our Field Offices to be community centers. Field Offices will be hubs where we can make calls and host events, but also a place where anyone can come and spend time in. Organizers will have offices staffed by local volunteers and tailor the office to the needs of the community they are in.
In Phase Two we will launch the Rural Organizing Program. The program will consist of rural relationship mapping, a rural tour, a series of Rural Summits, and rural organizing support systems and structures. Our rural tour will be an opportunity to hear concerns, present the Phase Two program plan, and recruit local applicants for full-time and part-time organizing positions. We know that programming in rural communities looks different than urban and suburban areas, and Texas Democrats are committed to providing targeted training and creating a sense of team across large areas.
We know that our volunteers already have pre-existing networks, from their coworkers and their neighbors to their family, and if we are going to engage volunteers across the entire state we will need them to engage those they know best. We will facilitate relational networking trainings which give volunteers the support and the guidance to have effective in-person conversations about why they are volunteering and why others should join them.
While the bulk of campus programming will happen in the late summer and fall, we will implement a Spring Campus Program on the campuses included in the first five regions. The goal of the spring program is to register voters, recruit for part-time and full-time positions within the organizing program, increase visibility on campus and foster trust with campus groups and leadership.
We will also launch a part-time Spring Organizing Fellowship program in the field that targets high school, young adults, and college students that want to learn more about working on campaigns, get hands-on experience organizing and be in the pipeline for a full-time Organizing job.
Convention Programming
Phase Two culminates at the State Convention. As the largest state convention in the country, with 15,000+ attendees, the Texas Democratic Convention holds abundant opportunities for volunteer recruitment, volunteer training, and voter registration. It also serves as an opportunity to present the work the Organizing team accomplished in the previous twelve weeks.
Conclusion
For years, the pundits have called Texas “the future” of the Democratic Party, or America, itself. Texas isn’t just the future. Texas is now.
In 2020, Texas Democrats will defy expectations for what collective and relationship-driven action can accomplish. We are fighting for a more equitable, inclusive, and hopeful Texas and we have clear eyes on the high stakes and on everything we can accomplish. When we come together, raise the bar, get organized and never settle, we will redefine what is possible this election cycle and for a generation to come.
https://www.texasdemocrats.org/media/2020-series-voter-protection/
February 6, 2020
Texas Democrats 2020 Series is a multi-part look on Texas Democrats’ path to victory in 2020. In today’s post, we look at the obstacles that have historically prevented Texans from voting, and how we’re going to tear down those hurdles and expand ballot box access across the state.
To turn Texas blue in 2020, Texas Democrats are committed to making sure Texas voters have access to the ballot box. We recently shared the details of our comprehensive, statewide voter registration program, which has set into motion our path to victory.
Texas Democrats will never stop fighting back against all Republican attempts to suppress the vote. Last week, we won a lawsuit to force the Texas Department of Public Safety to comply with the National Voter Registration Act. We won against David Whitley and stopped his voter purge. We are in court to reverse the ban on mobile voting.
In addition, Texas Democrats have begun building the most comprehensive voter protection program in Texas history. We will not allow Republican attempts to make voting more difficult for eligible Texans. We have been working diligently to guarantee that every registered voter in Texas has the opportunity to participate in our democracy.
The Texas Democratic Party is the focal point of the Democratic offensive strategy, and the electoral milestones we’ve reached in recent elections have set the stage for a blue Texas in 2020. Texas Democrats are fighting to make sure this next election — the most important in our lifetime — is free, fair, and accessible.
To expand and improve our voter protection efforts, Texas Democrats are proud to partner with Stacey Abrams and her organization, Fair Fight.
Leader Abrams and Fair Fight believe in the Democratic Texas we’re building. That’s why they have invested in our voter protection efforts. We will expand on the details of our Fair Fight partnership below.
Protecting the right to vote is our responsibility. We should be making it easier for eligible Texans to cast their ballot. We’ve identified hurdles that Texas voters face, and we’ve outlined how we’re going to challenge and ultimately tear down these obstacles. Thanks to our new Voter Protection Team, Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight, and the voter protection volunteers across Texas, the Texas Democratic Party is going to expand access to the ballot box, turn Texas blue up and down the ballot, and shape the political future of our great state.
The Problem
The right to vote is under attack.
Our nation is better off when more Americans participate in our democracy. The reality is Republicans and powerful special interests are trying to rig our elections.
From trying to purge hundreds of thousands of voters from the voter rolls to discriminatory voter ID restrictions, Texas Republicans have made every attempt possible to limit voting rights for Texans. The biggest threat to Texas elections is that Texas Republicans have used their legislative power to corrupt the integrity of our democracy. Texas Republicans continue to try to make voting more confusing, scary, and difficult. It’s just plain wrong for politicians to try to influence elections by discouraging voters that don’t agree with them.
To minimize and ultimately dismantle the effects of Republican voter suppression, Texas Democrats have mounted an expansive, statewide voter protection initiative unprecedented in its scope. We are mobilizing and energizing our movement across Texas to ensure every eligible voter can cast a ballot that counts.
The Solution: Voter Protection
Texas Democrats are thrilled to partner with Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight to ensure every Texan has access to the ballot box. During her 2018 gubernatorial race, Stacey Abrams experienced first-hand how voter suppression can single-handedly determine the outcome of an election. Her opponent, who was overseeing the election in which he was also running, targeted voters of color and actively worked to dilute their voting power and limit their access to the polls.
After the election in Georgia, Leader Abrams didn’t just get angry, she got active. She founded her organization Fair Fight to ensure that voters across the country were protected against predatory tactics used to discourage, disenfranchise, and disempower them. Texas Democrats are working alongside Leader Abrams and Fair Fight to fund, recruit for, train and support a robust voter protection team of staff and volunteers — and we’re starting now, not weeks before the election.
The investments of Leader Abrams and Fair Fight in the Texas Democratic Party marks a pivotal moment for our country, and we thank them endlessly for their support.
Voter Protection Team
The Texas Democratic Party has hired two new staff members who will be at the helm of our voter protection efforts. In addition to my role as our voter protection director, we have Darcy Caballero on board as voter assistance hotline manager.
Texas Democratic Party Legislative Affairs Director Glen Maxey, a former Democratic Representative in the Texas House, has laid the groundwork for our robust voter protection framework throughout his decades-long career in Texas politics. Not only has he developed key relationships with both Republicans and Democrats across Texas’ elections community, Glen has also spearheaded initiatives to improve state law and make voting easier for eligible Texas voters. Thanks to his unwavering commitment, our 2020 Voter Protection Team is equipped with the resources needed to expand our protection of Texas voters.
Texas Democrats are also proud to work with voting rights attorney Chad Dunn, General Counsel for the Texas Democratic Party. Since his appointment in 2003, Chad has successfully pursued voting rights and redistricting cases on the party’s behalf across the state. From regulatory and election cases to civil rights and redistricting suits, Chad has represented the party as we challenge voter suppression at every turn.
Additionally, we’re hiring two new roles — a Deputy Director of Voter Protection and a Voter Protection Organizer. Help us recruit great folks to join this fight!
https://www.texasdemocrats.org/media/2020-series-lets-register-texans-to-vote/
January 13, 2020
Texas is the biggest battleground state in the country.
The rapidly emerging Democratic coalition in Texas has set the stage for historic Democratic gains at the ballot box. In order to close the statewide gap and win in 2020, we must register and engage a new electorate that is more progressive and represents the diversity of our great state.
Texas Democrats are building state party infrastructure unprecedented in its capacity and momentum — and we’re undertaking the most expansive voter registration program in our party’s history. We have been working diligently to register more Texas voters ahead of the 2020 election and we are thrilled to share our voter registration plans with you today.
Looking forward to 2020, there remain 2,600,000 unregistered voters in Texas who are likely to vote Democratic, if registered.
During the 2018 midterm elections, thanks to our voter registration initiatives, we helped 133,000 Democratic Texans register shortly before the registration deadline — and 120,000 of those who registered, voted. These efforts and successes of registering 133,000 voters represent a high watermark among progressive efforts and surpass any Republican effort.
These investments had a monumental impact and contributed to — and in some cases equaled — the margin of victory in congressional and legislative districts that flipped from Republican to Democrat.
This year offers even greater potential to add more Democrats to the rolls. Looking ahead to the October deadline, the Texas Democratic Party is focused on registering a share of the estimated 2,600,000 Texans who are likely to vote Democratic if they register to vote.
Through the shifting demographics in Texas, amplified by Texas Democrats’ aggressive voter registration initiatives, we anticipate the voter rolls will swell to upwards of 18,000,000 registered voters in 2020.
Texas Democrats have been putting in the work to ensure November 2020 marks a new era in Texas politics — one where every single Democrat is ready, able and mobilized to vote. But these trends didn’t just start in 2018. A look at how voter registration has changed over the past decade reveals more Texans have been registering. One thing we know is that most new voters are voting for Democrats.
2020 Data
According to an independent analysis by TargetSmart, “2,644,532 people have registered to vote in Texas” since the 2016 Election Day and “1,660,173 of those new voters are people of color and/or under the age of 25. Trump carried the state by 807,179 votes.”
These recently registered voters and those we register this cycle are primed and ready to be mobilized to the polls. Turnout is highly expected to increase in 2020, not only because turnout normally surges in presidential elections compared to midterms, but also due to the polarizing nature of the Trump presidency.
Where are potential new Democratic voters?
There are Democrats to register in most of Texas’ 8,000+ precincts — but to maximize our pick-ups this November, Texas Democrats are adopting targeted strategies to grow the Texas electorate.
For instance, there is a concentration of unregistered voters in target State House districts, including 210,000 potential new Democrats in 12 districts that flipped in 2018. Additionally, there are 315,000 potential new Democrats in 18 targeted State House districts for 2020.
At the congressional level, we estimate there are 495,000 potential new Democrats in the eight DCCC-targeted districts. In order to turn Texas blue up and down the ballot, we’re strategically ramping up our voter registration efforts to ensure we flip these districts come November.
Engaging African American, Asian American, and Latinx constituencies
Our African American, Asian American, and Latinx communities represent a significant portion of unregistered voters in Texas. There are also major opportunities to register and expand participation among the LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities.
Texas Democrats are recruiting and training constituency organizers tasked with mobilizing these communities and strategically spearheading voter registration efforts among these likely Democratic voters. We will talk more about our constituency organizing programs below.
Turning Out Young Voters
Texas Democrats know that turning out the youth vote will be critical to our success in 2020. There are 1,600+ high schools in Texas with students who are turning 18. Additionally, there are 600+ colleges, community colleges, and trade schools in Texas with unregistered students. The Texas Democratic Party is working alongside fellow Democratic organizations to ensure these young voters are pinpointed for voter registration and mobilization.
Data-driven strategies
Early, major investments in data programs are key to turning out new and low propensity voters. The Texas Democratic Party is growing the data team significantly in order to capture and identify new registrants earlier. We are building machine-learning-based models to quickly identify the partisanship-leaning of new and low propensity voters so that campaigns can mobilize Democratic voters. Additionally, we are hiring support staff to embed directly with campaigns to support local organizing efforts.
Registering voters in person
In order to win the White House, take out John Cornyn, send more Texas Democrats to Congress, flip the Texas House, and elect hundreds of local Democrats across the state, Texas Democrats are spearheading an expansive, statewide grassroots initiative to reach every part of our growing Democratic movement.
We are going to have 1,000 field organizers and canvassers on the ground in 2020. We are proactively chasing voter registration forms sent to new Texas residents, knocking on the doors of Texans who need to get registered, partnering with organizations doing high school and college campus organizing, and developing and fostering a culture of registration amongst Texans.
We have hired dedicated staff to engage every part of our Democratic coalition — including our AAPI, African-American, Latinx, LGBTQ+, youth, and Disability communities — and to narrow the gap in rural committees. Texas Democrats’ constituency organizers are identifying the highest impact means to reach the most people. They’re reaching out to small businesses, faith groups, chambers of commerce, and community leaders with strong networks — enlisting and mobilizing advocates for voter registration and participation among within each community.
“Hotspot” registration, or registration drives at public venues where potential Democratic voters gather, is one of the most common registration tactics. This is a tried and true method, and our team will continue to train and mobilize volunteers in every corner of the state in using these best practices. But Texas Democrats are also gearing up to reach our voters directly where they live.
In the coming weeks, we will announce significant partnerships and investments in door-to-door registration. First, a mobile toolkit that empowers volunteers to easily find, canvass, and efficiently register potential new Democrats. And soon, we’ll deploy our first round of field staff to neighborhoods in targeted districts with the most Democrats to register.
If you’re looking to join our registration teams, the first step is becoming a volunteer deputy registrar. Volunteer deputy registrars are responsible for officially registering voters in the State of Texas. Appointed by county voter registrars, deputy registrars are tasked with helping increase voter registration across our great state. To learn more about becoming a Volunteer Deputy Registrar, visit the Secretary of State’s website and make sure you’ve signed up to volunteer with the Texas Democratic Party for registration opportunities.
Adopting a Digital Approach to Voter Registration
Through our online hub for expanding and protecting the vote — MyTexasVotes.com — Texans can register to vote, learn more about voting, find their polling place, print their Democratic ballot, report any challenges while voting, and more. We must amplify efforts to reach voters who may be unfamiliar with their voting options.
Thanks to our partnership with Register2Vote, eligible Texans can sign up to register at MyTexasVotes.com and receive a pre-filled application in the mail with a stamped envelope addressed to their local elections office. We’re equipping the thousands of candidates, local parties, precinct chairs, and partners to use their online networks to spur more registration, and we are amplifying their efforts by investing in the aggressive digital promotion of this one-stop-shop for all things related to voting.
Registering voters by mail
We’re making it easier to register to vote and challenging the hurdles erected by Republicans to make it harder to vote. Republicans know that the only way they continue to win elections is through suppressing the vote because when more people vote, Democrats win.
One big way that we’re engaging with unregistered Texans is through voter registration by mail. The Texas Democratic Party is gearing up to mail hundreds of thousands of voter registration applications to unregistered voters across the state. Once we’ve sent the registration cards, we follow-up with texts, calls, and knocks, to guarantee these Democratic Texans are on track to vote.
This program is a priority for Texas Democrats; voter registration is the first critical step on the path to victory for flipping our state. By registering and mobilizing this significant chunk of unregistered Texans, Texas Democrats will be that much closer to turning Texas blue up and down the ballot.
To read about the new, expansive program, click here.
For our voter registration program, the Texas Democratic Party plans to put 1000 field staff and canvassers on the ground across the state, mail Texans who need to get registered a voter registration card, proactively chase voter registration forms sent to Texans, working alongside fellow Democratic organizations to ensure these young voters are pinpointed for voter registration and mobilization, and foster a culture of registration. The Texas Democratic Party has also launched a year-long voter protection hotline where voters can get the information they need to register to vote and cast their ballot.
More highlights from the programs include:
By the numbers:
Texas Democratic Party Deputy Executive Director Cliff Walker issued the following statement:
“Texas is the biggest battleground state in the country. We know that our democracy works better when more people vote, not less. The rapidly emerging Democratic coalition in Texas has set the stage for historic Democratic gains at the ballot box. That’s why the Texas Democratic Party is proud to be launching our most expansive voter registration program yet.
“We are committing our resources to register and engage a new electorate that is more progressive and represents the diversity of our great state. Shifting the electorate in Texas is our top priority. We will win the White House, take out John Cornyn, send more Texas Democrats to Congress, break the supermajority in the Texas Senate, flip the Texas House, and elect hundreds of local Democrats across the state.”
For more reading, check out ABC’s exclusive story here.
Texas Democratic Party
February 22, 2021
Texas Democrats Unveil 2020 Post-Election Data Analysis
Data Includes: How the
Pandemic Prevented Texas Democrats
from Identifying Our Targeted Voters,
How Texas Republicans Increased Their
Electorate, and What Happened with the
Latino Vote in Texas
Austin, Texas — Today, the Texas Democratic Party unveiled our 2020 post-election data analysis delving into what happened in the 2020 election: the trends, numbers, and data behind the results in Texas. Additionally, we’re sharing preliminary analysis on how Texas Democrats can continue our ascent as the biggest battleground state in the country and flip the state.
To view the full 2020 Texas Election Data Analysis, click here.
Texas Democrats have a lot to be proud of in the 2020 election. With little national investment, President Biden became the closest Democrat to flip Texas at the Presidential level in 25 years. Texas Democrats came within 11,500 votes of flipping the Texas House, and we increased our vote total by 1.3 million voters — equating to the second-highest amount of growth in Democratic vote share in the country since 2012.
Still, Texas Democrats failed to reach our goals. Due to a surge in spending in the final months before the election and a willingness to knock doors in the midst of the pandemic, Republican registration outpaced Democratic registration efforts by 26,000 net votes over the course of the 2020 election cycle.
The analysis also
shows:
- Texas Democrats GOTV efforts failed to activate voters to the same extent as Republicans;
- The lack of in-person voter registration and campaigning significantly hampered our chances to flip the state — Texas Democrats and Texas Democratic campaigns were unable to successfully connect with critical portions of our base: particularly young voters and voters of color;
- For the most part, Latino voters continue to support Texas Democrats; however, Republicans did a better job turning out their Latino base better than we did. In particular, we need to find better methods of connecting with Latino voters in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley;
-
There was a late surge of newly
registered Texas Republicans in the last
three months of the cycle, during which
Texas Republicans earned a net 88,000
votes solely by outperforming Democratic
registration efforts;
When we are able to reach folks and have genuine, human-to-human conversations whether on the phone or in person, we know voters are more likely to make their voice heard and vote for Texas Democrats. This is especially true of folks with limited voting histories or new voters. When we successfully engaged these newer or less consistent voters, they tended to have a 4-6% increase in their likelihood of turning out. However, our ability to reach voters was limited by the phone numbers we had access to. Our phonebanks failed to reach many Texans, but especially renters, younger folks, and folks of color.
Moving forward, the Texas Democratic Party is developing actionable plans to keep Texas on track to flip in 2022 and 2024. These plans include:
- Investing heavily in direct voter contact as early and as much as possible. As soon as it is safe, Texas Democrats plan on knocking on doors across the state.
- Building a robust voter registration program. We must reverse the gains made by Republicans in 2020. Statewide orgs, county parties and campaigns need to further expand the electorate by getting folks registered and making it both safe and easy for them to cast their ballot.
- Building and expanding on our organizing program.Fieldwork helps us find persuadable voters. Listening to people who make up our party helps us understand the needs of our communities and increases the likelihood of inconsistent or new voters to make their voices heard in elections.
-
Turning out more Latino
voters. The
analysis shows that roughly 65% of
Latino voters in Texas are Democrats,
but Latino voters are not a monolith. In
the Rio Grande Valley, Trump received an
increase in support but in most of
Texas, there is only weak evidence for
Latino voters being persuaded to support
Republicans. The larger part of the
story in 2020 was that Latino Democrats
did not keep up with the spike in Latino
Republican turnout.
Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa issued the following statement:
“Texas is still the biggest battleground state in the country. The path forward for Texas Democrats is clear: we must continue to register voters and build the type of field operation that meets voters where they are.
“When it comes to Latino voters, analysis shows that Latino voters are core to the Texas Democratic Party. Latinos support Democrats over Republicans two to one in Texas. Republicans maxed out Latino Republicans while Latino Democrats stayed home. That must change and is central to our path to victory in Texas.
“More than anything, the analysis shows that Texas is still ripe for the taking in 2022 and 2024. We need sustained investment now to begin our efforts to flip the state. Now is not the time to abandon Texas, it is the time to double down and help us fund our efforts. Our path forward could not be more clear. We can flip the state and win statewide and local elections in Texas is now closer than ever for Texas Democrats.”
Texas Democratic Party CTO John Elson issued the following statement:
“Our data team is the best data team in the country. Our analysis shows that there are clear challenges for Texas Democrats, but it also shows a clear path forward. If we do the work and begin to invest in field and voter registration efforts now, we can close the gap and flip the state in the coming years.
“It is going to take an all-hands-on-deck effort, but Texas Democrats are still on track to flip the state. The lack of in-person campaigning in 2020 hurt Texas Democrats by not allowing us to identify persuadable voters, forcing us to rely on outdated phone information that did not account for the fundamental shift in the Texas electorate and hampered our GOTV efforts allowing Texas Republicans to beat us among late registering voters. These are all fixable issues.
“I thank our extraordinary Data Science Director Hudson Cavanagh for putting together this analysis and giving the Texas Democratic Party a clear mandate of where the Party needs to go. The time to invest in Texas is now and our time to flip the state is still right in front of us.”
###
In the first quarter of 2020 the Texas Democratic Party outlined detailed programs for voter registration, voter protection, organizing and data.
https://www.texasdemocrats.org/media/2020-series-the-texas-model-using-cutting-edge-data-to-turn-texas-blue/
March 12, 2020
_____________________________
March 12, 2020
2020 Series: The Texas Model — Using Cutting-Edge Data to Turn Texas Blue
We recently unveiled the details surrounding our voter protection, voter expansion, and organizing programs. Through these comprehensive, statewide initiatives, Texas Democrats will register more Democrats in Texas and help every eligible voter cast their ballot. Our work doesn’t stop there. For all of these programs to work, we must also invest in tools that help us better understand the Texas electorate and the voting behavior of individual Texans.To do that, Texas Democrats are releasing the first-ever Texas Model developed in-house.
We are building the biggest Democratic movement this state has ever seen. By making innovative, unique investments, we built our own machine learning model that will help campaigns across the state prioritize their precious resources and time.
Our Texas partisanship model will allow us to predict the partisan affiliation of potential voters in Texas with an unprecedented degree of accuracy. We will identify and prioritize potential voters by leveraging machine-learning techniques and Texas-specific data.
The Texas Model will also answer one of the biggest organizing questions: which voters do we engage first?
The Answer: Our Texas Model
The leadership at the Texas Democratic Party recognized that in order to win, we must reimagine what our data team can do. They understood that by investing in our data infrastructure, we could build data tools that benefit every campaign, up and down the ballot.
One of these tools is the Texas Model: the first-ever state party-developed partisanship model.
By building a Texas-specific model, we were able to design for what makes the Texas electorate unique, such as our geographic diversity and our changing demographics.
The model helps us know who we need to engage to turn out the vote in November. This allows us to avoid spending resources re-identifying reliable Democrats and instead grow our coalition by focusing on those with uncertain partisanship. The scores are also fundamental to our persuasion efforts. We need to ask voters we are uncertain about which party they identify with and why. Our Texas model helps us implement targeted outreach more effectively.
The Texas Democratic Party decided we could not simply rely on off-the-shelf scores because Texas is different. No matter how brilliant the folks who built national models are, national trends do not necessarily apply to Texas. Our data team was only able to build the model thanks to those who spent hundreds of thousands of hours knocking doors, volunteering for phone banks, and organizing events. Without the data collected from this work, our Texas model could not exist.
What is a “partisanship score?”
A partisanship score is a number, typically from 0-100, that estimates the likelihood that an individual is a Democratic voter. The higher a voter’s number, the higher the likelihood that they’re a Democrat. For example, when a campaign is developing a get out the vote strategy, they might use this score to avoid spending time knocking on reliably Republican doors.
In machine learning, models are given a training set of “correct” answers that they then use to “learn” about trends. The closer the training set approximates the universe they’re trying to predict, the more accurate the predictions.
These scores and predictions are typically developed by national, third-party vendors, which assess the entire American electorate. However, Texas isn’t like any other state. Our candidates are different. Our districts are different. Our voters are different.
Our model estimates that between two-thirds and three-fourths of those who did not have scores from the national models are likely Democratic voters, who might otherwise have been missed.
Putting the Texas Model into action
The Texas Democratic Party and our partners across the state are working harder than ever to register millions of new voters across the state. But registering voters is not enough: we need to be engaging with as many of those new voters as possible. In order to figure out how to prioritize our get out the vote efforts between now and November, we need to have scores for every Texas voter.
The best way to test a model is by putting it to work in the field. Whether a campaign uses our score for targeting or not, every time they interact with a voter, we are getting invaluable data about whether our prediction for that voter was correct. We are also investing in a large-scale, randomized trial to validate our predictions, which will be invaluable in identifying areas where the model could be improved.
The biggest strength of building our own model is that whenever a Democratic campaign makes contact with a voter and records that respondent’s partisanship — or a variety of other useful data about a potential voter — our model learns more about that voter. Through this effort, campaigns up and down the ballot are contributing to a positive feedback cycle that will help power efforts to turn Texas blue in 2020 and all future election cycles.
As we register more voters across the state, we must engage with younger Texans and Texas of color, and we cannot afford to wait three months for other models to update their scores for newly registered voters.
We have been extensively testing our Texas Model using data from 2018. Our model has scores for 99.99% of registered voters and can be re-run less than a week after a voter file update. These scores help us target our get out the vote efforts for both seasoned voters and newly registered folks at the same time.
The Texas Model has a number of advantages compared to the national models built by national vendors:
- Scores are available for 100% of registered voters in Texas and will become available for newly registered voters shortly after they appear on the voter file.
- Our model is trained using only Texas data and is, therefore, better calibrated to predict the unique voting behavior of Texans, such as strategic primary voting.
- Our model will get smarter over time. Every time we record a voter interaction – especially if we learn about that voter’s partisanship – the model gets better at predicting not only that voter’s behavior but the behavior of voters across the state.
As anybody who has ever knocked on doors knows, sometimes our predictions will be wrong. These “mistakes” will be fundamental to improving the performance of our model over time. We are working closely with campaigns and allies to gather feedback on the model, as well as providing detailed insight about how our model works under the hood to ensure that they remain logical and intuitive.
What does this mean for the future?
Our Texas model will allow us to invest and improve our model each cycle. One of the most powerful benefits of this approach is our ability to combine the insights of models built by our partners in a variety of ways. We can make additional models quickly and with confidence.
Our model will continue to learn from every voter we talk to throughout 2020. More observations mean more accurate predictions, not only for the voter we are speaking to, but the entire Texas electorate. For every door we knock, the better our targets become.
We believe our investment in developing and maintaining our own partisanship model will soon be standard practice in swing states across the country. When we flip Texas, the investments made in our data infrastructure will be impossible to ignore.
Simply put, this is how we win.
https://www.texasdemocrats.org/media/2020-series-lets-organize-texas-voters/
March 9, 2020
2020 Series: Let’s Organize Texas Voters
By Olivia Stitilis
At the start of 2020, Texas Democrats unveiled our comprehensive, statewide Voter Expansion Program which details how we will register millions of new voters and expand opportunities for voters to participate in our democracy.
In partnership with the Voter Expansion team, the Texas Democratic Party is now launching a statewide Organizing Program that redefines what it means to organize in Texas. Through innovative, relational, and constituency driven organizing tactics, we will engage, train and mobilize volunteers in every corner of the state. We will expand the electorate, elect Democrats up and down the ticket in November, and create a lasting volunteer infrastructure that catalyzes community change and growth beyond 2020.
In order to set the stage for a new era of organizing in Texas, we will be first and foremost grounded in quality – quality experiences with voters, volunteers, staff, training, recruitment efforts, and quality relationships. Our organizing will be guided by clear values and united around a culture that puts volunteers and community members first. We will be informed, not burdened by the past, and we will approach every day and every interaction as an opportunity to organize.
We will invest early in places that traditionally have been forgotten or left behind. Our team will work collaboratively with the communities we serve, approach new situations with humility, and be transparent with our goals by soliciting feedback every step of the way. We recognize that there is no one size fits all approach to organizing in Texas, and are motivated to craft specific and effective programs that showcase what Democrats can accomplish when united around a shared belief that we can make history in 2020.
Phase 2: March 4 — June 7
We’ve developed an organizing timeline, broken into phases, each of which has a unique set of goals and intentions. In this series, we will primarily discuss the second phase of our organizing rollout. The milestones we reach and the successes we achieve during each phase will have a direct impact on the goals we set in the stages thereafter.
2020 Phases
For planning purposes, we break out 2020 into several phases:Phase 1: January 2020 through the Primary (March 3)
Phase 2: Primary through the State Convention (June 6)
Phase 3: State Convention through Labor Day (September 7)
Phase 4: Labor Day through the Voter Registration deadline (October 5)
Phase 5: Voter Registration through Election Day (November 3)
Voter Registration Programming
Critical to our path to victory is expanding the electorate. We have developed an array of programs that will set us up for success to accomplish just that. Some programs will be implemented across all of Texas and other programming will only be for certain constituencies or areas of the state.
In an effort to build strong community relationships across the state, Organizers will host Voter Registration Community Strategy Sessions. By meeting with community members in small groups to discuss the best ways to do voter registration in their particular part of Texas, Organizers and local leaders will have the opportunity to share ideas and come together collectively.
To scale up our voter registration effort, we are running an ambitious Volunteer Deputy Registrar Recruitment Program that recruits volunteer deputy registrars who are trained and certified to be able to officially register voters in their county. Volunteer deputy registrars are responsible for officially registering voters in the State of Texas. Appointed by county voter registrars, deputy registrars are tasked with helping increase voter registration across our great state.
We’ll boost the impact of those volunteer deputy registrars through our High Traffic Voter Registration Program. Organizers will recruit to build up voter registration volunteer teams that disperse throughout high traffic areas to maximize their collection of forms.
This intentional strategy will allow the organizing program to expand its efforts and will also equip community members with the tools and skills needed to organize their communities beyond November. By the end of phase two, the Organizing team will have recruited at least one new Volunteer Deputy Registrar in all 254 counties.
We will launch RegisterTexas a web-based platform that guides volunteers and organizers to blockwalk unregistered voters in targeted areas. The RegisterTexas platform will also highlight any voter we mail an application to register through our Democratic Movers registration program, making it easy for volunteers to remind those voters to mail in their applications. This tool will help the organizing program be even more efficient with resources and increase the number of voters we can register through blockwalking.
Finally, we will launch specific voter registration programs targeting communities that require earlier attention and more intensive relationship-building to organize effectively, such as our South Texas Voter Registration Program and Rural Voter Registration Program, and we will recruit Campus and High School Voter Registration Captains who will identify, build relationships with and train high school and college students to help with strategic initiatives at their school.
By the end of phase two, the Organizing team will have recruited at least one new Volunteer Deputy Registrar in all 254 counties.
Constituency Organizing Programming
The Constituency Organizing platform consists of six Organizers, each of whom focuses on building relationships with the AAPI, African American, Latinx, LGBTQ+, People with Disabilities and Gen-Z/Millennial constituencies. In phase two, Organizers are dedicated to building coalitions within their constituencies, developing partner relationships, and implementing constituency specific volunteer recruitment and engagement opportunities.
We will host multiple constituency based voter registration events per month with each event targeting a different sub-constituency. Organizers will train constituency specific Volunteer Leaders to lead events across the state. This will allow the team to increase their output and create an infrastructure of ambassadors to the Constituency Organizing program across Texas.
Constituency Organizers will also create Constituency Organizer Tool Kits containing resources and training materials to support our larger Organizing Program and to help volunteers working within their constituencies. These will include best practice one-pagers, handbooks, background information, and interactive training materials. For example, they will put together resources for how to do voter registration effectively in each community. We will share these resources with candidates, staff, and make them publically available on our website.
By building relationships with volunteers, voters, influencers, community leaders, and progressive organizations, our Constituency Organizers will create a diverse organizing infrastructure that empowers Texans in communities across Texas.
Community Partnership Programming
Above all else, we will continue to implement programs that showcase the strength of the Democratic movement across Texas.
Before the end of phase two, we will facilitate Organizing Meetings that will provide opportunities for organizing staff to introduce themselves, ask questions, learn from attendees, share parts of the phase two organizing plan, and solicit feedback in at least 100 counties across Texas.
We will also work with communities to produce bimonthly Days of Service in numerous regions across Texas that rally community members around a specific issue outside of volunteering for the Texas Democrats. Day of Service Activities can include cleaning a park or helping at a school and allow our program to give back to the areas where we are working and connect over the issues that matter most in 2020.
The focus of our organizing apparatus will be expansive; we plan to go beyond just working to elect Democrats. We want our Field Offices to be community centers. Field Offices will be hubs where we can make calls and host events, but also a place where anyone can come and spend time in. Organizers will have offices staffed by local volunteers and tailor the office to the needs of the community they are in.
In Phase Two we will launch the Rural Organizing Program. The program will consist of rural relationship mapping, a rural tour, a series of Rural Summits, and rural organizing support systems and structures. Our rural tour will be an opportunity to hear concerns, present the Phase Two program plan, and recruit local applicants for full-time and part-time organizing positions. We know that programming in rural communities looks different than urban and suburban areas, and Texas Democrats are committed to providing targeted training and creating a sense of team across large areas.
We know that our volunteers already have pre-existing networks, from their coworkers and their neighbors to their family, and if we are going to engage volunteers across the entire state we will need them to engage those they know best. We will facilitate relational networking trainings which give volunteers the support and the guidance to have effective in-person conversations about why they are volunteering and why others should join them.
While the bulk of campus programming will happen in the late summer and fall, we will implement a Spring Campus Program on the campuses included in the first five regions. The goal of the spring program is to register voters, recruit for part-time and full-time positions within the organizing program, increase visibility on campus and foster trust with campus groups and leadership.
We will also launch a part-time Spring Organizing Fellowship program in the field that targets high school, young adults, and college students that want to learn more about working on campaigns, get hands-on experience organizing and be in the pipeline for a full-time Organizing job.
Convention Programming
Phase Two culminates at the State Convention. As the largest state convention in the country, with 15,000+ attendees, the Texas Democratic Convention holds abundant opportunities for volunteer recruitment, volunteer training, and voter registration. It also serves as an opportunity to present the work the Organizing team accomplished in the previous twelve weeks.
Conclusion
For years, the pundits have called Texas “the future” of the Democratic Party, or America, itself. Texas isn’t just the future. Texas is now.
In 2020, Texas Democrats will defy expectations for what collective and relationship-driven action can accomplish. We are fighting for a more equitable, inclusive, and hopeful Texas and we have clear eyes on the high stakes and on everything we can accomplish. When we come together, raise the bar, get organized and never settle, we will redefine what is possible this election cycle and for a generation to come.
https://www.texasdemocrats.org/media/2020-series-voter-protection/
February 6, 2020
2020 Series: Voter Protection
By Rose Clouston, Voter Protection
Director
Texas Democrats 2020 Series is a multi-part look on Texas Democrats’ path to victory in 2020. In today’s post, we look at the obstacles that have historically prevented Texans from voting, and how we’re going to tear down those hurdles and expand ballot box access across the state.
To turn Texas blue in 2020, Texas Democrats are committed to making sure Texas voters have access to the ballot box. We recently shared the details of our comprehensive, statewide voter registration program, which has set into motion our path to victory.
Texas Democrats will never stop fighting back against all Republican attempts to suppress the vote. Last week, we won a lawsuit to force the Texas Department of Public Safety to comply with the National Voter Registration Act. We won against David Whitley and stopped his voter purge. We are in court to reverse the ban on mobile voting.
In addition, Texas Democrats have begun building the most comprehensive voter protection program in Texas history. We will not allow Republican attempts to make voting more difficult for eligible Texans. We have been working diligently to guarantee that every registered voter in Texas has the opportunity to participate in our democracy.
The Texas Democratic Party is the focal point of the Democratic offensive strategy, and the electoral milestones we’ve reached in recent elections have set the stage for a blue Texas in 2020. Texas Democrats are fighting to make sure this next election — the most important in our lifetime — is free, fair, and accessible.
To expand and improve our voter protection efforts, Texas Democrats are proud to partner with Stacey Abrams and her organization, Fair Fight.
Leader Abrams and Fair Fight believe in the Democratic Texas we’re building. That’s why they have invested in our voter protection efforts. We will expand on the details of our Fair Fight partnership below.
Protecting the right to vote is our responsibility. We should be making it easier for eligible Texans to cast their ballot. We’ve identified hurdles that Texas voters face, and we’ve outlined how we’re going to challenge and ultimately tear down these obstacles. Thanks to our new Voter Protection Team, Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight, and the voter protection volunteers across Texas, the Texas Democratic Party is going to expand access to the ballot box, turn Texas blue up and down the ballot, and shape the political future of our great state.
The Problem
The right to vote is under attack.
Our nation is better off when more Americans participate in our democracy. The reality is Republicans and powerful special interests are trying to rig our elections.
From trying to purge hundreds of thousands of voters from the voter rolls to discriminatory voter ID restrictions, Texas Republicans have made every attempt possible to limit voting rights for Texans. The biggest threat to Texas elections is that Texas Republicans have used their legislative power to corrupt the integrity of our democracy. Texas Republicans continue to try to make voting more confusing, scary, and difficult. It’s just plain wrong for politicians to try to influence elections by discouraging voters that don’t agree with them.
To minimize and ultimately dismantle the effects of Republican voter suppression, Texas Democrats have mounted an expansive, statewide voter protection initiative unprecedented in its scope. We are mobilizing and energizing our movement across Texas to ensure every eligible voter can cast a ballot that counts.
The Solution: Voter Protection
Texas Democrats are thrilled to partner with Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight to ensure every Texan has access to the ballot box. During her 2018 gubernatorial race, Stacey Abrams experienced first-hand how voter suppression can single-handedly determine the outcome of an election. Her opponent, who was overseeing the election in which he was also running, targeted voters of color and actively worked to dilute their voting power and limit their access to the polls.
After the election in Georgia, Leader Abrams didn’t just get angry, she got active. She founded her organization Fair Fight to ensure that voters across the country were protected against predatory tactics used to discourage, disenfranchise, and disempower them. Texas Democrats are working alongside Leader Abrams and Fair Fight to fund, recruit for, train and support a robust voter protection team of staff and volunteers — and we’re starting now, not weeks before the election.
The investments of Leader Abrams and Fair Fight in the Texas Democratic Party marks a pivotal moment for our country, and we thank them endlessly for their support.
Voter Protection Team
The Texas Democratic Party has hired two new staff members who will be at the helm of our voter protection efforts. In addition to my role as our voter protection director, we have Darcy Caballero on board as voter assistance hotline manager.
Texas Democratic Party Legislative Affairs Director Glen Maxey, a former Democratic Representative in the Texas House, has laid the groundwork for our robust voter protection framework throughout his decades-long career in Texas politics. Not only has he developed key relationships with both Republicans and Democrats across Texas’ elections community, Glen has also spearheaded initiatives to improve state law and make voting easier for eligible Texas voters. Thanks to his unwavering commitment, our 2020 Voter Protection Team is equipped with the resources needed to expand our protection of Texas voters.
Texas Democrats are also proud to work with voting rights attorney Chad Dunn, General Counsel for the Texas Democratic Party. Since his appointment in 2003, Chad has successfully pursued voting rights and redistricting cases on the party’s behalf across the state. From regulatory and election cases to civil rights and redistricting suits, Chad has represented the party as we challenge voter suppression at every turn.
Additionally, we’re hiring two new roles — a Deputy Director of Voter Protection and a Voter Protection Organizer. Help us recruit great folks to join this fight!
https://www.texasdemocrats.org/media/2020-series-lets-register-texans-to-vote/
January 13, 2020
2020 Series: Let’s Register Texans to Vote
Texas Democrats 2020 Series is a multi-part look on Texas Democrats’ path to victory in 2020. In today’s post, we look at Texas’ rapidly growing electorate and how we’re going to get more Texans registered to vote.Texas is the biggest battleground state in the country.
The rapidly emerging Democratic coalition in Texas has set the stage for historic Democratic gains at the ballot box. In order to close the statewide gap and win in 2020, we must register and engage a new electorate that is more progressive and represents the diversity of our great state.
Texas Democrats are building state party infrastructure unprecedented in its capacity and momentum — and we’re undertaking the most expansive voter registration program in our party’s history. We have been working diligently to register more Texas voters ahead of the 2020 election and we are thrilled to share our voter registration plans with you today.
Looking forward to 2020, there remain 2,600,000 unregistered voters in Texas who are likely to vote Democratic, if registered.
During the 2018 midterm elections, thanks to our voter registration initiatives, we helped 133,000 Democratic Texans register shortly before the registration deadline — and 120,000 of those who registered, voted. These efforts and successes of registering 133,000 voters represent a high watermark among progressive efforts and surpass any Republican effort.
These investments had a monumental impact and contributed to — and in some cases equaled — the margin of victory in congressional and legislative districts that flipped from Republican to Democrat.
This year offers even greater potential to add more Democrats to the rolls. Looking ahead to the October deadline, the Texas Democratic Party is focused on registering a share of the estimated 2,600,000 Texans who are likely to vote Democratic if they register to vote.
Through the shifting demographics in Texas, amplified by Texas Democrats’ aggressive voter registration initiatives, we anticipate the voter rolls will swell to upwards of 18,000,000 registered voters in 2020.
Texas Democrats have been putting in the work to ensure November 2020 marks a new era in Texas politics — one where every single Democrat is ready, able and mobilized to vote. But these trends didn’t just start in 2018. A look at how voter registration has changed over the past decade reveals more Texans have been registering. One thing we know is that most new voters are voting for Democrats.
2020 Data
[Graph: Registered Voters in
Texas]
According to an independent analysis by TargetSmart, “2,644,532 people have registered to vote in Texas” since the 2016 Election Day and “1,660,173 of those new voters are people of color and/or under the age of 25. Trump carried the state by 807,179 votes.”
These recently registered voters and those we register this cycle are primed and ready to be mobilized to the polls. Turnout is highly expected to increase in 2020, not only because turnout normally surges in presidential elections compared to midterms, but also due to the polarizing nature of the Trump presidency.
Where are potential new Democratic voters?
There are Democrats to register in most of Texas’ 8,000+ precincts — but to maximize our pick-ups this November, Texas Democrats are adopting targeted strategies to grow the Texas electorate.
For instance, there is a concentration of unregistered voters in target State House districts, including 210,000 potential new Democrats in 12 districts that flipped in 2018. Additionally, there are 315,000 potential new Democrats in 18 targeted State House districts for 2020.
At the congressional level, we estimate there are 495,000 potential new Democrats in the eight DCCC-targeted districts. In order to turn Texas blue up and down the ballot, we’re strategically ramping up our voter registration efforts to ensure we flip these districts come November.
Engaging African American, Asian American, and Latinx constituencies
Our African American, Asian American, and Latinx communities represent a significant portion of unregistered voters in Texas. There are also major opportunities to register and expand participation among the LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities.
Texas Democrats are recruiting and training constituency organizers tasked with mobilizing these communities and strategically spearheading voter registration efforts among these likely Democratic voters. We will talk more about our constituency organizing programs below.
Turning Out Young Voters
Texas Democrats know that turning out the youth vote will be critical to our success in 2020. There are 1,600+ high schools in Texas with students who are turning 18. Additionally, there are 600+ colleges, community colleges, and trade schools in Texas with unregistered students. The Texas Democratic Party is working alongside fellow Democratic organizations to ensure these young voters are pinpointed for voter registration and mobilization.
How We’re Going to Register More Voters
The Texas Democratic Party works diligently to ensure that all eligible Texans are registered and energized to turn out and vote. We’re making unprecedented investments in voter registration in order to maximize on the unparalleled enthusiasm amongst Democrats in Texas. In order to engage with as many unregistered Texans as possible, Texas Democrats are launching and expanding various strategies that will set the stage for a blue Texas.Data-driven strategies
Early, major investments in data programs are key to turning out new and low propensity voters. The Texas Democratic Party is growing the data team significantly in order to capture and identify new registrants earlier. We are building machine-learning-based models to quickly identify the partisanship-leaning of new and low propensity voters so that campaigns can mobilize Democratic voters. Additionally, we are hiring support staff to embed directly with campaigns to support local organizing efforts.
Registering voters in person
In order to win the White House, take out John Cornyn, send more Texas Democrats to Congress, flip the Texas House, and elect hundreds of local Democrats across the state, Texas Democrats are spearheading an expansive, statewide grassroots initiative to reach every part of our growing Democratic movement.
We are going to have 1,000 field organizers and canvassers on the ground in 2020. We are proactively chasing voter registration forms sent to new Texas residents, knocking on the doors of Texans who need to get registered, partnering with organizations doing high school and college campus organizing, and developing and fostering a culture of registration amongst Texans.
We have hired dedicated staff to engage every part of our Democratic coalition — including our AAPI, African-American, Latinx, LGBTQ+, youth, and Disability communities — and to narrow the gap in rural committees. Texas Democrats’ constituency organizers are identifying the highest impact means to reach the most people. They’re reaching out to small businesses, faith groups, chambers of commerce, and community leaders with strong networks — enlisting and mobilizing advocates for voter registration and participation among within each community.
“Hotspot” registration, or registration drives at public venues where potential Democratic voters gather, is one of the most common registration tactics. This is a tried and true method, and our team will continue to train and mobilize volunteers in every corner of the state in using these best practices. But Texas Democrats are also gearing up to reach our voters directly where they live.
In the coming weeks, we will announce significant partnerships and investments in door-to-door registration. First, a mobile toolkit that empowers volunteers to easily find, canvass, and efficiently register potential new Democrats. And soon, we’ll deploy our first round of field staff to neighborhoods in targeted districts with the most Democrats to register.
If you’re looking to join our registration teams, the first step is becoming a volunteer deputy registrar. Volunteer deputy registrars are responsible for officially registering voters in the State of Texas. Appointed by county voter registrars, deputy registrars are tasked with helping increase voter registration across our great state. To learn more about becoming a Volunteer Deputy Registrar, visit the Secretary of State’s website and make sure you’ve signed up to volunteer with the Texas Democratic Party for registration opportunities.
Adopting a Digital Approach to Voter Registration
Through our online hub for expanding and protecting the vote — MyTexasVotes.com — Texans can register to vote, learn more about voting, find their polling place, print their Democratic ballot, report any challenges while voting, and more. We must amplify efforts to reach voters who may be unfamiliar with their voting options.
Thanks to our partnership with Register2Vote, eligible Texans can sign up to register at MyTexasVotes.com and receive a pre-filled application in the mail with a stamped envelope addressed to their local elections office. We’re equipping the thousands of candidates, local parties, precinct chairs, and partners to use their online networks to spur more registration, and we are amplifying their efforts by investing in the aggressive digital promotion of this one-stop-shop for all things related to voting.
Registering voters by mail
We’re making it easier to register to vote and challenging the hurdles erected by Republicans to make it harder to vote. Republicans know that the only way they continue to win elections is through suppressing the vote because when more people vote, Democrats win.
One big way that we’re engaging with unregistered Texans is through voter registration by mail. The Texas Democratic Party is gearing up to mail hundreds of thousands of voter registration applications to unregistered voters across the state. Once we’ve sent the registration cards, we follow-up with texts, calls, and knocks, to guarantee these Democratic Texans are on track to vote.
This program is a priority for Texas Democrats; voter registration is the first critical step on the path to victory for flipping our state. By registering and mobilizing this significant chunk of unregistered Texans, Texas Democrats will be that much closer to turning Texas blue up and down the ballot.
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RELEASE: Texas Democratic Party Announce Largest Voter Registration Program in Texas History
Austin, TX — Today, the Texas Democratic Party announced its innovative 2020 voter registration program — the largest in Texas history.To read about the new, expansive program, click here.
For our voter registration program, the Texas Democratic Party plans to put 1000 field staff and canvassers on the ground across the state, mail Texans who need to get registered a voter registration card, proactively chase voter registration forms sent to Texans, working alongside fellow Democratic organizations to ensure these young voters are pinpointed for voter registration and mobilization, and foster a culture of registration. The Texas Democratic Party has also launched a year-long voter protection hotline where voters can get the information they need to register to vote and cast their ballot.
More highlights from the programs include:
- We are going to have 1,000 field organizers and canvassers on the ground in 2020.
- The Texas Democratic Party is gearing up to mail hundreds of thousands of voter registration applications to unregistered voters across the state.
- We’re launching a year-round voter assistance hotline.
- We are building machine-learning-based models to quickly identify the partisanship-leaning of new and low propensity voters so that campaigns can mobilize Democratic voters.
- We are hiring dedicated staff to engage every part of our Democratic coalition — including our AAPI, African-American, Latinx, LGBTQ+, youth, and Disability communities — and to narrow the gap in rural committees.
- The Texas Democratic Party is working alongside fellow Democratic organizations to ensure these young voters are pinpointed for voter registration and mobilization.
By the numbers:
- We anticipate the voter rolls will swell to upwards of 18,000,000 registered voters in 2020.
- The Texas Democratic Party is focused on registering the estimated 2,600,000 Texans who are likely to vote Democratic if they register to vote.
- At the congressional level, we estimate there are 495,000 potential new Democrats in the eight DCCC-targeted districts.
- We estimate 210,000 potential new Democrats in the 12 state house districts that flipped in 2018. Additionally, there are 315,000 potential new Democrats in 18 targeted State House districts for 2020.
Texas Democratic Party Deputy Executive Director Cliff Walker issued the following statement:
“Texas is the biggest battleground state in the country. We know that our democracy works better when more people vote, not less. The rapidly emerging Democratic coalition in Texas has set the stage for historic Democratic gains at the ballot box. That’s why the Texas Democratic Party is proud to be launching our most expansive voter registration program yet.
“We are committing our resources to register and engage a new electorate that is more progressive and represents the diversity of our great state. Shifting the electorate in Texas is our top priority. We will win the White House, take out John Cornyn, send more Texas Democrats to Congress, break the supermajority in the Texas Senate, flip the Texas House, and elect hundreds of local Democrats across the state.”
For more reading, check out ABC’s exclusive story here.