While several polls show Republican challenger Mitt Romney leading President Barack Obama by a sizeable margin in Texas, several political faces--including former Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush-are predicting that the predominantly Republican leaning state could one day go Democratic.
The Houston Chronicle cited Thursday a recent sit down interview that Bush-who governed Florida from 1999 to 2007 and whose father, George. H. W., and brother, George W. Bush, were the 41st and 43rd presidents, respectively-had with New York Magazine this week, where he predicted that the longstanding red state of Texas might turn blue as soon as 2016.
The reason, Jeb said, was because the GOP has failed to capitalize on the Hispanic population boom will eventually weaken, even cripple, the Republican party's chances of regaining power. And he points to Texas as being Ground Zero for that scenario.
"It's a math question," he tells The New Yorker's Joe Hagan in the magazine's Oct. 14 article. "Four years from now, Texas is going to be a so-called blue state. Imagine Texas as a blue state, how hard it would be to carry the presidency or gain control of the Senate."
Bush wasn't wrong to point to the Hispanic boom in Texas as reason for that assertion. According to the 2010 US Census data released last year, many of the 4.2 million new residents that accounted for the Lone Star State's growth were Latinos, as USA Today reported in 2011.
Texas's Democratic US Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who serves the state's 18th District based in Houston, could eventually see the state turning Democratic one day after years of Republican dominance.
Jackson told the Chronicle last month that she could see the state change blue as soon as 2014, when the next round of elections for the governorship and other state offices.
"I'm so glad that America is getting to see the Texas I love where everyone can stand equal," Jackson Lee said during the Democratic National Convention in September, which she attended under the Texas Democratic delegation. "We're a purple state going to blue."
But it won't turn blue in time for the Nov. 6 presidential election, according to recent polls from Real Clear Politics, which show Republican challenger Mitt Romney firmly in the lead over President Barack Obama by as much as between six to 19 percentage points, tallied from seven different polls.
Texas has 38 Electoral College votes.