Is Texas turning blue?

Unlikely.

Obama did win major cities in Texas including San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Austin and El Paso and mid-sized cities inlcluding Laredo, Corpus and the Rio Grande Valley, which is mainly Hispanic.

I'm suprised at the results, not because it was a Republican victory but because Democrats made improvements over the last presidential election.

This is the way Texas voted in 2004 when Bush and Kerry ran.

I'm not stupid, I know Texas voted for Bush because he's a Texan and Democrats haven't won the state since the Jimmy Carter campaign, but the numbers shown for each county show the support for Bush MUCH higher than previous GOP candidates. Heck, even traditional Democratic counties/cities such as San Antonio and Brownsville voted for Bush. Laredo voted 44% for Bush. THAT IS TOO HIGH for a town like Laredo.

Then we compare it with this year's race.

There are around 8-10 counties that turned blue but this includes the heavy-populated Dallas county (whatever name it has), Harris County (Houston) and Bexar County (San Antonio). They were neck in neck but the increasing Latino population, I think, really gave these counties to Obama. 70% of voters in Laredo voted for Obama and Brownsville, which supported Bush with 50% of the vote gave McCain only 35%.

I don't think Texas will turn blue in the next few presidential elections but I do think the numbers are shrinking for the GOP or the Democratic party is gaining ground for a small comeback in Texas.

Again, in 2004, Bush won Texas with over 60% of the vote over Kerry's 38.2%. That's more than a 20% difference. In contrast, McCain won Texas by 11%.

And to back me up here's a link: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/hispanic_91605___article.html/democratic_voters.html