Tuesday, December 8, 2020

From the Texas Tribune: What went wrong with Texas Democrats' 2020 plans? State party leaders intend to find out.

 For our look at political parties in Texas.

- Click here for the article.

Texas Democrats severely underperformed expectations in the November election after looking to it as their best shot in decades at making inroads. President Donald Trump carried the state by 6 percentage points, U.S. Sen John Cornyn won reelection by 10 points, Democrats picked up zero U.S. House seats despite targeting 10 and their push to flip the state House fizzled as they gained one seat and lost another.

Democrats have since said they were misled by bad polling and lamented their decision to hold off on in-person campaigning during the coronavirus pandemic. Hinojosa cited both those factors in a letter responding to the executive committee members, while saying he agrees that a "complete analysis needs to be done on this to determine what really happened."

"The Party is committed to conducting a 'deep dive' analysis of the election, using outside persons or entities, and partnering with other allied groups to fund it if necessary," Hinojosa wrote.

The Tribune obtained a copy of the letter that was dated Friday. In it, the State Democratic Executive Committee members raise a host of issues related to the governing body's relationship with party staff — which appear to predate this election cycle — as well as the party's role in the November election.