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What Georgia Politics Can Tell Us About Texas' Path To Turning Purple

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ABC News' Matthew Dowd says shifts are happening here, too, but will take longer because of Texas' long history of being a deep red state.

From Texas Standard:

As results come in from Georgia's two Senate runoff elections, the chances are growing that two Democratic Senators from that state will soon be headed to Capitol Hill.

Those races, along with President-elect Joe Biden's win there, signal major changes in Georgia politics. ABC News Chief Political Analyst Matthew Dowd says they're part of changes happening throughout the South and Southwest.

"This election and a series of the last few elections have shown ... there's a resorting of the electoral map in of states across the country," Dowd told Texas Standard.

Arizona, Nevada and Georgia have all shifted from red to purple. The shift is more subtle in Texas, but it's happening here, too, Dowd says.

"Texas has shifted from deep red to light red. And my guess is, along the same lines, it will soon in the next election or two or three, will shift to purple," Dowd said.

The reason for the shifts, Dowd says, is more complicated than just East and West-coast Democrats moving into these areas and changing the politics. Suburbs are also growing, and Democrats have been increasingly successful in those areas. It's also the result of organizers, like former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, reaching out to voters who normally didn't participate in elections. Dowd says turning out those voters showed that Georgia was never as deep-red a state as many had assumed.

"I think that Georgia, like Texas and like some other states, have been more nonvoting states than they have been deeply Republican states," he said.

But even though Texas and Georgia share similar demographic shifts and voting patterns, Texas has father to go, Dowd says, in the shift from redto purple.

"It's just going to take a little while longer for a place like Texas, which has the same dynamics, because it started out longer and deeper red," he said.

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Rhonda joined KUT in late 2013 as producer for the station's new daily news program, Texas Standard. Rhonda will forever be known as the answer to the trivia question, “Who was the first full-time hire for The Texas Standard?” She’s an Iowa native who got her start in public radio at WFSU in Tallahassee, while getting her Master's Degree in Library Science at Florida State University. Prior to joining KUT and The Texas Standard, Rhonda was a producer for Wisconsin Public Radio.
David entered radio journalism thanks to a love of storytelling, an obsession with news, and a desire to keep his hair long and play in rock bands. An inveterate political junkie with a passion for pop culture and the romance of radio, David has reported from bases in Washington, London, Los Angeles, and Boston for Monitor Radio and for NPR, and has anchored in-depth public radio documentaries from India, Brazil, and points across the United States and Europe. He is, perhaps, known most widely for his work as host of public radio's Marketplace. Fulfilling a lifelong dream of moving to Texas full-time in 2005, Brown joined the staff of KUT, launching the award-winning cultural journalism unit "Texas Music Matters."
Caroline Covington is Texas Standard's digital producer/reporter. She joined the team full time after finishing her master's in journalism at the UT J-School. She specializes in mental health reporting, and has a growing interest in data visualization. Before Texas Standard, Caroline was a freelancer for public radio, digital news outlets and podcasts, and produced a podcast pilot for Audible. Prior to journalism, she wrote and edited for marketing teams in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. She has a bachelor's in biology from UC Santa Barbara and a master's in French Studies from NYU.
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