18-35 year olds now the largest voting bloc in Travis County, Texas - Polidicks

https://www.statesman.com/news/20181026/young-voters-now-form-largest-bloc-in-travis-county A record number of 18-to-35-year-olds — more than 300,000 — are registered to vote in Travis County, making them the county’s largest voting bloc, according to numbers released Friday by officials. The age group now makes up 39 percent of the total registered voter population, 780,133, in the county, according to the data snapshot taken earlier this week. As of the data, 302,327 young voters were registered in Travis County. Since the 2014 midterm election, the age group’s percentage of overall registered voters has increased by 6 percentage points, up from 33 percent. “This is the largest increase of younger registered voters we’ve ever documented in Travis County, and that is significant and notable,” Voter Registrar Bruce Elfant said Friday morning during a news conference on the University of Texas campus. Voters aged 36 to 55 make up about 35 percent of the registered population in Travis County, down from 36 percent in 2014, and voters aged 56 and above make up about 26 percent, down from 30 percent in 2014, according to the data. This is fairly massive because Travis Country houses Austin, the capital of Texas and a large liberal city. Hopefully Beto uses that 70 million he's raised to fund the world's greatest GOTV effort.

Texas turning blue would be just fantastic

Texas turning blue would put the fear of god in the GOP. Texas is one of those holdout states that pretty much get called red the instant election coverage begins every 4 years.

Texas will become a swing state eventually, it's the second most populous state.

It'd be nice if all 50 states were swing states...

I'm not expecting Texas to turn blue, but I'm certain that in the next few years we can see a very nice shade of purple. Maybe another decade it can be turned, but I'm not so sure about right now, even with the current atmosphere.

uhh I know you're probably arguing for more democratic state control but if all 50 state were swing states I think the entire country would be in absolute pandemonium at all times lol

Why do you think many GOP Texans make Californians moving here the bogymen? They vote democrat. And every Californian that moves here is another vote for the Democrats. And that scares the hell out of the GOP. Come Californians one and all to Texas. Hope you enjoy your stay. Enjoy some Whataburger.

Beto has doubled Cruz's fundraising with fucking 70 million dollars, it's insane, he has youthful optimism we haven't seen since Obama and JFK really. He's also handsome as fuck

Historically, states had much less partisan lean - or, phrased the opposite way, party support was much less localized. Either way, the majority of the country could be considered "swing states" by modern standards. And there weren't really any problems from that. It didn't even make polling useless because a swing state is one that would be balanced (or close to it) if the national popular vote were 50/50. That was rarely the case back then (and I suspect it's related) - elections were pretty regularly 60-40 blowouts.

I'm arguing for the abolishment of the electoral college entirely, more or less. The fact that we have swing states at all is a major problem with our election system that needs addressing.

All that money and Beto is likely to lose.

The magic letter R is a free ticket to election no matter how bad a person is. If he uses that money to get Hispanics and youth to vote for once he can pull it off

I think you can argue that having the president be elected directly is desirable, but that's some political philosophy iunno much about. You could make the electoral college much better though without scrapping it, just by making it so that electors have to vote proportionally (e.g., if a state goes 50-50, half the electors vote for one candidate, another half vote for the other.)

https://twitter.com/houtopia/status/1056179356173770752 https://twitter.com/houtopia/status/1056227895230808064 https://twitter.com/houtopia/status/1056232993210155009 Harris county houses Houston. That percentage of people under 35 seems low but it grows each day, it was 15% on day three and 16% on day four.

The other way to fix the Electoral College is to unfreeze its population distribution from where it's been locked at 1916 population statistics and make it actively reflect the modern-day US population. The EC was supposed to shift periodically in accordance with the national census but it's been frozen in place for over a century. Tiny rural states have incredibly outsize power as a result, making the EC undemocratic. Electors must also be allowed to choose to defy their state votes. The entire point of faithless electors is to prevent a tyrannical candidate from becoming President. That doesn't work if electors are just human proxies for state ballot counts.

I don't really see how you can fix it when the minimum electors a state can have is three.

The minimum is three, but add more electors to populous states and problem solved. The House is also supposed to be representative to population changes, but surprise, it isn't, and that's before gerrymandering even comes into play. The Senate is where all states have equal representation.

It'd be really hard expanding the size of the house, Republicans would scream it's an urban Democrat power grab

Republicans are allergic to playing by the rules unless it disproportionally benefits them, tell me something I don't know.

My mom (Who is a conservative) said he reminded her of a white Obama in both looks and demeanor.

The fact that it's this close is laughable though.

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1056623584062382087 El Paso is Beto's birthplace and where he represented in Congress

I voted Beto. Ever since I brought it up to my folks I did want to vote for midterms, the amount of "You can't vote wrong unless you vote Beto" really just drove home how scary and cultish some people can be about these sorts of things. I hope other people around that age range still voted what they wanted and not what people say they have to.

once had a member of my family tell me that voting is completely black and white, either "evil or the republicans" or something among those lines

No better way to tell someone that you're the enemy and that they should vote against you than to give them the "You're either for us or against us" speech So retarded and unacceptable

Idiots lile that really make me doubt the merits of democracy But what else are we gonna do?

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1058040401901350912 Dayum

My grandmother refuses to believe I could possibly have voted for Hillary. All I could say to prevent upsetting her was to say "I did not vote for Trump".