22 United States The EconomistOctober 5th 2019
21urban and suburban ones to show up at
polls in 2018—they cast just 89% of their
2016 votes last year—they will be back in
force next year. So-called “drop-off” voters
typically come back in presidential years.
Most election handicappers calculate
the partisan lean of a state by comparing
overall vote share in the state with what
happened nationwide. This method can
skew things, because not all members of
Congress have an opponent. This distorts
the numbers, because would-be Republi-
can voters who live in a district where there
is no Republican candidate do not count
(the same is true of Democratic voters
where a Republican runs unopposed).Scaling Guadalupe Peak
Fill in the blanks by predicting what a Re-
publican or Democrat running in such a
place would probably have won if they had
contested these seats, and the state’s parti-
san lean is a little stronger. Texas was 13
points more Republican than the nation as
a whole in the 2018 House mid-terms. That
is a lot to overcome, especially with Repub-
lican voters returning to the polls in 2020.
We reckon a Democratic presidential
candidate would have to perform nine per-
centage points better in Texas than Mrs
Clinton did in 2016 in order to win. Accord-
ing to data from Civiqs, a pollster, the presi-
dent’s net approval rating is still positive in
the state. It will take a lot of votes to close
the gap. Drew Galloway, moveTexas’s exec-
utive director, predicts that Democrats
would need to register 500,000 new voters
to make the state a true toss-up. Abhi Rah-
man, a spokesman for the Texas Democrat-
ic Party, says that only 160,000 new Demo-
crats voted in 2018 compared with 2016.
Texans will not just be voting for the
president next year, though. Thirty-six
congressional representatives, one senator
and 150 members of the state House will
also be up for re-election. According to Ju-
lie Oliver, a Democratic candidate in Tex-
as’s 25th congressional district who also
ran for the seat in 2018, progressives have
tangible hope in a handful of these down-
ballot races. “People care about health care,
education and the economy, and they want
the incumbents out,” Ms Oliver says of vot-
ers in the 25th district, a massive area that
stretches 200 miles from the majority-mi-
nority precincts of East Austin to suburban
towns just south of Fort Worth. Her success
hinges on the same registration-based
strategies on which groups like movehave
led the charge. Though optimistic, Ms Oli-
ver is “not taking anything for granted”—
she lost by nine percentage points last time
round. It is rare for districts to shift so sud-
denly in such a short amount of time.
Six of the state’s Republican House
members have so far decided to call it quits
before the 2020 election even gets started.
Three represent competitive districts. Oneof those retiring is Will Hurd, who repre-
sents the 23rd district, a broad sweep of
sagebrush between El Paso and San Anton-
io. Voters in Mr Hurd’s district voted for
Mrs Clinton by 3.4 percentage points in
2016 and chose to re-elect him by less than
one point last year.
In a speech in June to a gathering organ-
ised by gay Republicans, reported by the
Washington Blade, Mr Hurd appeared pessi-
mistic about his party’s future. “This is a
party that is shrinking. The party is not
growing in some of the largest parts of our
country,” he said. “Why is that? I’ll tell you.
It’s real simple: Don’t be an asshole. Don’t
be a racist. Don’t be a misogynist, right?
Don’t be a homophobe. These are real basic
things that we all should learn when we
were in kindergarten.” This view is not
widely shared, however. In both the 22nd
and 24th districts, where incumbents are
retiring, Mr Trump won by 8 percentage
points in 2016, which this far out from poll-
ing day looks like a comfortable cushion.Yet these downballot efforts may run
into the sand in a presidential year. Demo-
cratic efforts have not gone unanswered by
Republicans, resulting in an arms race in
campaign-finance spending. Engage Tex-
as, a political action committee (pac), has
raised $10m to register Republican voters
throughout the state. According to Mr Rah-
man, Democrats plan to spend similarly.
But resources allocated to Texas deprive
candidates in other, more competitive
states of crucial fundraising dollars.
Handicappers at the University of Virginia
predict that Senate races in nine other
states will be more competitive than those
in Texas. And since ads there are more ex-
pensive than they are elsewhere—Texas
has separate media markets for each of its
metro areas—the price of competing is
high. As long as the state remains a reddish
shade of purple, magenta perhaps, there is
a risk for Democrats that, in dreaming of
Texas, they may overlook states where
their prospects are better. 7D
onald trump’sstyle of political crisis-
management is straightforward: admit
nothing, counter-attack, obfuscate, ride it
out and wait for public attention to wane.
That got him through the release of the Ac-
cess Hollywood tape—on which he boasted
about grabbing women between the legs a
month before the 2016 election—and also
through Robert Mueller’s report, which
identified acts that could amount to ob-
struction of justice. But past success is no
guarantee of future performance.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House,
announced on September 24th that the
House was beginning a formal impeach-
ment inquiry into Mr Trump over allega-
tions that he abused his power by encour-
aging Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of
Ukraine, to investigate Hunter Biden, who
served on the board of a Ukrainian energy
firm, and his father Joe, a front-runner in
the Democratic primaries. Since then Mr
Trump has seemed rattled. He has decried
impeachment as “a coupintended to take
away the Power of the People” (it is a consti-
tutional process that would still leave
America with a Republican president if it
removed Mr Trump).
He has said that Adam Schiff, chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee,
should be “questioned at the highest level
for Fraud & Treason” for unfavourablyparaphrasing his phone call with Mr Zelen-
sky (legislative immunity protects Mr
Schiff ). He has spoken of “a Civil War like
fracture in this nation” if he is removed
from office. He has warned that he is “try-
ing to find out” the identity of the whistle-
blower whose complaint inspired the im-
peachment inquiry—and whose anonym-
ity federal law protects. He has falselyWASHINGTON, DC
Are the president’s tactics up to scratch?ImpeachmentCall and response
Interference on the line