Despite long being considered a Republican county, Fort Bend went blue on Nov. 8 when Hillary Clinton won the county with an almost seven-point margin of victory. It wasn’t just an electoral flip — it was a 13-point swing from the 2012 presidential election.
And it marked the third presidential election in which the Republican presidential candidate did not win the county by double digits.
Political observers say it’s still too early to call Fort Bend a battleground county after just one election in which it flipped from red to blue. But given its demographics — and the possibility that those could help it turn reliably purple in the future — they acknowledge that something is afoot in this diverse pocket of Texas.
“This phenomenon is a direct result of the fact that the two population groups Trump did the worst with was college-educated voters and minority voters,” said Jay Aiyer, a Texas Southern University assistant professor of political science and public administration. “Fort Bend is unique in that it has a high share of both.”
Like most suburbs, Fort Bend’s landscape is a combination of affluent neighborhoods, old ranch homes, rows of new subdivisions, strip malls and open space. About 45 percent its residents have bachelor’s degrees — well beyond the state’s overall rate of 28.4 percent.
But unlike most suburban counties, Fort Bend is home to minority working and middle classes — except here they aren’t in the minority.
Black and Asian Texans have long made up a larger share of the county’s population compared to their small numbers statewide. And as the share of the county’s white residents dropped from 40.7 percent in 2005 to 34.5 percent in 2015, the share of Hispanic and Asian residents has steadily grown.
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The numbers are still being crunched, but political observers attribute Clinton’s win in the county to a boost in minority voters, particularly Asian Americans, splitting their tickets to vote against Trump.
Fort Bend County had the highest share of straight-ticket voters in November among the state’s 10 biggest counties, but Democrats outnumbered Republicans among the 76 percent of voters that cast straight-ticket ballots.
At a time when the Republican party both in Texas and nationwide is generally moving farther to the right, the challenge for Fort Bend Republicans in the future will be bringing back those typically Republican voters who switched over this year, said Aiyer, the political scientist.
“That’s the question: Has the shift become more permanent?” he added.
A lot of this is stuff I’ve covered before, so I don’t have any great insights. I do think the shift is more durable, given the numbers in the downballot races, but Fort Bend is a dynamic place, and the steady influx of new residents makes it hard to say what things will look like politically going forward. Democrats will have some opportunities this year to make gains in local elections, and that’s something we need to watch. A big piece of the puzzle here is just believing that it can be done, which maybe the 2016 results have helped to do. Fort Bend is still Republican-dominated, but it is not a Republican stronghold any more. It’s just a matter of time before the first part of that assessment changes as well.