The United States of Texas

We previously looked at all 31 State Senate districts to see which state they best matched at the presidential level.  If we took the State Senate results and put them into a national map, here's what the result from 2012 looked like:

5 Senate districts matched Utah, so there are 5 Utahs, etc.  A lot of red.  If Democrats want to change the landscape both statewide and in the State Senate, they need to find more Georgias, i.e., purple states that are willing to split their tickets.

This brings up another issue.  In order to find more Georgias, you probably need to unpack some Democrats from safe Democratic districts.  The problem with that is most of those Democratic districts are VRA protected districts so you run into the problem of regression.  But I digress...

Another way to look at the State Senate districts going from the most Democratic on the left to the most Republican on the right:

And here's another way.  Again most Democratic to the most Republican.  It should be noted that SD 10 voted Republican, but is blue because it is represented by a Democrat:

And if you didn't like any of those visuals, here's one more:

It should be noted that the two most Democratic districts, SD 13 & 23, are represented by African-Americans and have high African-American populations in their districts.  Looking at them through the prism of an African-American President, it looks like Democrats could move some of the Democrats out of these 2 districts into some surrounding districts and try turning some red district purple.  The question will be when Obama isn't on the ticket, will these 2 districts still perform at this level?  You also have to wonder, if these 2 African-American districts saw their vote shoot up with Obama, would a number of Hispanic Senate districts see a similar spike with a Hispanic presidential candidate?