Texas turnout foretells doom for Republicans

IF you want to know why Republicans could face a wipeout in the presidential election this November, consider Bexar County, home of the US's seventh largest city, San Antonio.

IF you want to know why Republicans could face a wipeout in the presidential election this November, consider Bexar County, home of the US's seventh largest city, San Antonio.

Voters can go to the polls early in the US primary races for the Democratic and Republican party nominations, and no-one has ever seen the level of enthusiasm now being witnessed in Bexar County.

Early voting closed on Friday and the results are in: the Democrats beat the Republicans three to one. According to the Bexar County Elections Department, 101,244 citizens voted for the Democratic candidates (Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama) while the Republicans (John McCain and trailing candidate Mike Huckabee) managed to garner just 32,457 votes.

In the 2004 primary election races, only 24,000 voters turned out in Bexar County.

Across Texas, counties report turnouts between five to 26 times greater than ever witnessed, and most voters are breaking for the Democratic candidates. Texas electioneers haven't indicated which way the Democratic vote has gone, but there's no doubt Senator Obama has roused the youth vote in a way not seen in a generation.

Even allowing for the fact the Democratic voters are engaged because their party's race is still a contest - unlike McCain's sure march to his party's nomination - the signs are troubling for the Republicans.

The 2006 mid-term elections indicated a shift was happening, and that particularly Hispanic support for Republicans is sinking fast in Texas.

As Jonathan Gurwitz, a member of the editorial board of the San Antonio Express-News, wrote last week, going back to the Reagan Revolution, a central element of the strategy to remake Texas as a Republican stronghold was to reach a goal of at least 40per cent of the Hispanic vote.

George W. Bush hit this target in his 1994 governor race and again in 1998 (when the party effectively took over the state, achieving majorities across the board), and he won 40 per cent of the Hispanic vote in Texas in the 2004 presidential race.

But the on-the-ground enthusiasm among Democrats now is tangible, and as Gurwitz says, there is no similar effort among the Republicans.

In Texas, Republicans hold a slim majority in the State Congress and the party is looking highly vulnerable - as goes Texas, so goes the US.