RIGHT SPEAK: Democrats are Aiming to Make Texas a Swing State..with Hispanics as Major Players

College football is practically a religion in Texas, where tailgating starts just after sunrise and cars jam up Austin roads on game day.

But on opening day—and during Labor Day weekend, no less—a group of more than 50 people opted against mid-morning drinking in favor of meeting in a church to engage in the most mundane of civic activities: getting deputized to register people to vote.

Most of the people at this particular, nonpartisan county-run training found out about it through Battleground Texas, a newly formed Democratic group run by former Obama campaign operatives whose goal is to make Texas a competitive state in presidential races.

Demographic projections show Texas’s Hispanic population is mushrooming, giving rise to optimism among Democrats that they can turn Texas into a purple, swing state. But experts say a growing Hispanic population won’t automatically translate into dramatic increases in active voters, and Democrats will also need to win a larger share of the white vote to be successful.

The Numbers

Texas is one of the nation’s fastest-growing states, and much of that growth is owed to the booming Hispanic population. By 2020, Hispanics will outnumber non-Hispanic whites, or “Anglos,” as they’re called in Texas.

“This is not new to the last 10 or 20 years,” says Rice University professor Steve Murdock, a former Texas state demographer. “If you look at Texas history, it’s been a long-term kind of pattern of change.”

Higher birth rates and lower average ages among Hispanics also mean the state’s population is trending younger, Murdock said.

All of that seems to spell opportunity for Democrats. Exit polls weren’t conducted in Texas last year, but CNN exit polls in 2008 showed 63 percent of Latinos supported Barack Obama, versus 35 percent who voted for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. In 2004, 49 percent of Latinos voted for President Bush.