For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many Republicans prefer a dying white America to a place like, say, Houston.One reason is because the Republican Party is dying in Houston.
It’s a little hard to get Presidential election trends just for the city of Houston, so let’s look overall at sprawling Harris County, which has about twice the population of Houston, its county seat. With about 4.4 million inhabitants, Harris County in Texas, home to Houston, is the third most populous county in America (after Los Angeles and Cook counties).
Harris County, which is more or less the world capital of the energy industry, is one of the most conservative megalopolises in America. But even in Harris County, immigration is taking its toll on Republican chances in presidential elections, as this graph from the Texas Tribune shows:
Obviously, George W. Bush was personally popular in Harris County, one of his home towns, while Donald Trump is a New Yawker. But Harris County was so conservative in 1996 that even Bob Dole could easily defeat Bill Clinton there, while Mitt Romney couldn’t beat Barack Obama in Harris County in 2012.
A Rice U. study of Census results shows:
The last year the non-Hispanic white population grew in the city of Houston was 1980.Even Harris County as a whole is now remarkably nonwhite. The Harris County non-Hispanic white percentage of the population was 42% in 2000 and 33% in 2010.
And, despite Harris County having some of the most affordable family formation of any major urban area:
Today, just 21 percent of Harris County children under the age of 5 are non-Hispanic whites.Good luck, Republicans.
