This is in an interesting question that gets a lot of attention in my home state of Texas. I personally think Texas will turn blue in around 15-20 years. This is for several reasons 1. hispanics are growing in huge numbers in Texas, with over 200,000 new hispanic voters every 4 years in our state, who tend to lean heavily democrat. 2. Our biggest cities which are some of the fastest growing in the nation have flipped blue: San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and Houston, and by pretty big margins too. 3. blue areas have gotten even bluer ie El Paso, and the southern leg of texas with substantial sized cities like Brownsville and McAllen. 4. due to rapid city growth, and mass amounts of businesses moving from California and the North, The suburbs of our major metropolitan areas are much less staturated/concentrated with republicans as they were even 10-15 years ago. Make no mistake, they are still red, but much less so then a decade or so ago, and they seem to be continuing on that path. One suburban county of Houston, Fort Bend, even flipped blue this election, with a majority of the votes for Clinton. And another county suburb of Austin was within one point for Clinton. And most of the rest saw margins around 38-42 for Clinton vs 52-58 for Trump. While just in 2000 and 2004 most of the suburban counties ranged 23-34 ish for the Democrats, and 65-75 ish for the republicans. Even Corpus Christi was very close and came well within 2 points. And these changes are very visible in how our state has been voting. In 2000, Bush won with a margin of over 21 points, in 2004, Bush won with a margin of over 22 points, in 2008 McCain won with a margin barely over 11 points, in 2012 arguably one of Obama's worst approval times, and against a strong and possibly cream of the crop Republican, He lost by just over 15 points, and in 2016, not only couldnt president-elect cheeto puff win with double digits, he couldnt even manage to win with a 9 point margin (according to the secretary of state of texas, it was actually a hilarious 8.99% margin of victory, which makes it all the more hilarious). For these reasons, I believe Texas will eventually turn blue, but I would love to hear what people think.
Sidenote: I think if Texas does turn blue in a while from now, it will follow the path that Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado have taken, and which Arizona is taking right now. Meaning it will continue growing at a rapid rate, especially in the cities and in suburbs. It will also continue to get more and more people from strong blue areas for our friendly business environment ie. California, and the North, and combining it with astronomically growth of the hispanic population, it could turn the cities overwhelmingly blue, and de-saturate/ de-concentrate the suburbs of the republican vote to turn the counties either baby red or baby blue shades, which, in hopes, could be just enough to let the democrats sneak by with a teensy tiny margin of victory.
