In light of the Texas redistricting fight, a number of people have rushed to push out information about Texas that is astonishingly positive about Democrats in this state. It’s great to see people supporting and applauding our State Representatives in the Texas House Democratic Caucus, especially when we normally hear negative comments about how we get the elected officials that we deserve, not understanding that those same elected officials are some of the toughest fighters we’ve seen in the Trump years.
However, this past week on Threads, misinformation about Texas has been floating around about our state, despite those of us that have worked on the ground and in professional politics in Texas trying to clarify the record and asking repeatedly not to repeat that false information
That misinformation? That Texas has more “registered” Democrats than “registered” Republicans.
The push back has gotten worse as people repeating this misinformation have a SOURCE (on a website)! That says exactly what they want it to say! It says so right there, see!
The problem is, they haven’t looked beyond posting a link to that site that says exactly what they want it to say. Unfortunately, when it comes to making bold determinations on what numbers say, we really need to start being skeptical of data, including the source and methodology used to determine the numbers and also remember that numbers aren’t de facto answers, they’re actually usually questions and data was never intended to qualify party affiliation or voting history, but how people in this country felt about specific issues.
So, let’s dive deeper?
The Independent Voter Project is responsible for the misleading information on their Texas page. They go on to say that they get the information from L2 Data. The only problem is, the only information we get from L2 Data to discuss both their source and their metholody is a paltry paragraph, which reads:
Texas Texas voters do not register by party. However, when those voters participate in a partisan primary, that ballot choice is recorded and reported on the state voter file. In the absence of stronger indications (e.g. partisan political contributions or identification due to the holding of partisan public office) the most recent even-year partisan primary ballot is used. Texas reports participation in presidential preference primaries in which large percentages vote, particularly in the Republican races. In the absence of any even-year partisan primary participation, the most recent odd-year local partisan primary is used. This information is supplemented through the use of modeling analytics. Likely race in major urban areas plays a major role in that modeling.
This is what those of us that have done targeting in Texas have been trying, repeatedly over the past week to express.
We don’t register by party to vote in the primary, and just like some Democrats vote in Republican primaries, in especially rural areas where Democrats don’t even compete in district or local elections, some Republicans vote in Democratic primaries, especially in urban and major metropolitan areas to run against the candidates they want to, to skew the vote further.
But even more than that, is not understanding how they’ve arrived at their modeling data. Most people in Texas will tell you that, culturally this is not easy to qualify or quantify in the traditional sense based on modeling. Even according to their paragraph there is ample room for misrepresenting the numbers, especially when it comes to the Hispanic and Latino populations who often skew more conservative, but are often lumped into the Democratic Party erroneously.
I get it. If you’ve never targeted in Texas, you don’t understand just how hard it is to do so, by design. We supplement our records with consumer marketing data that is also not always an accurate indicator of how people in this state will vote.
That’s why those of us that have done the work have repeatedly asked that you stop spreading this misinformation. It doesn’t help us in the slightest and can cause voter apathy to increase in Texas, which is actually why we don’t know the true make up of the average person in this state. Our voter apathy is a tough fight and we need as much accurate information permeating through to others to understand what we’re up against.
Because the inevitable question that arises after hearing we have so many “registered Democrats” in Texas is why we allow Republicans to seize control at all levels of our government and don’t do anything to stop them, especially when it comes to gerrymandering our state repeatedly and that gets into more complications than questions.
All politics is local – and no more so when it comes to understanding what’s at play when it comes to elections.
As we stretch out into 2026, we need to start being mindful about when people that work in the very state express that something is wrong, to delete it and follow that up with why it was deleted… or to pause and ask the people in the state we’re talking about the reliability of the information before spreading it further to begin with. Engagement numbers don’t matter if we lose the big fights or make the work for those fighting those big fights harder.
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