Political Shift In Texas

Texas is one of the strongest republican states in the country. Texas had made a big swing from democratic dominance to republication controlling both states legislatures and have huge majority in congressional delegates. From the end of Reconstruction in 1874 until the 1960s, Texas was a one-party Democratic state. It always stunned me that in such small period of time in a historical context that the state completely changes its political party. The first indication of political change was the fact Texans voted for Republican presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower in the elections of 1952 and 1956, and after that, Texas become more and more republican and less and less democrats.

There are several factors on why Texas was democrat’s majority

state. Some of them includes: the alliance between groups of elites, the large landowners and the business leaders, used the politics of race and economics to successfully destroy these third party movements and keep the conservative Democratic elites in control of the state, the Great Depression, blamed on Republican President Herbert Hoover and the Republican Congress, reinforced the Democratic Party loyalties in Texas throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and Because of the one-party system in Texas, politics revolved almost exclusively around personality and economic issues and the lists goes on and on. So when a party holds a majority in the state, it is hard to change people's ideologies, thinking and the economic systems. Certainly, it is not impossible to do, and that what republican have done to Texas, but it all started with the small steps. One of the small steps, which end up becoming the big factor, was the election of republican presidential candidate in Texas.
The political shift in Texas was rather interesting because of it gradual increment of republican participant in the state legislature, senate, and house of representative.

once the republican party started to rise in Texas, it had not stopped and they have became more and more stronger. The election of Governor Bill Clements in 1978 and 1986, and Senator Phil Gramm's first victory in 1984 all indicated the gradual shift in party loyalty in Texas. Northern immigrants bringing in their Republican Party loyalties contributed to this shift, as did the growing liberalism of the national Democratic Party in the 1960s and 1970s and the popularity of Republican President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. Today, the profile of the typical Republican supporter in Texas is young, high income, well-educated, Anglo, professional, living in the suburbs of a large metropolitan area, and likely to be a newcomer to the state. In contrast, Democratic supporters tend to be older, native Texans, lower income, less educated, and often

non-white.
The political shift in loyalty towards one party was not sudden.

It was also not only because some of the republicans got elected and everybody started to shift towards the republican party. It was more of a natural growth of a Texas, mostly in late 1970s and early 80s. The influx of the people from other state has started to grow. Most of the in-migrants were belong to the group of people who have more tendencies to become republican; they have bit more money and more conservative. Another main reason of the democratic downfall in Texas was that there was a national tendency that there was a beginning to be the loss of conservative Democrats around the country. Especially in south, the numbers of conservative democrats were decreasing. That phenomenon gave republican an opportunity to rise and dominate most of the southern state including

Texas.
The history is right in front of current republicans. Most of them have known the history of this state. They know that the history can repeat and democrats may take control of the state. The main lesson republican learn from the downfall of dominant democratic party is that they need to be careful and not to make a same mistakes that democrats made which leads them to give up a great state. Democrats at that time didn’t pay more attention to the incoming in-migrants and how it might have change the dynamics of the population and might as well change the political system. Republican has face the same situation right now as the Latino immigrants in Texas is increasing and most of them are supporting many of the liberal’s ideology. It is evident that republicans are doing pretty good job with the Latinos population, but they need to pay more attention to this type of population, which is increasing in Texas.