There seems to be an inherent human belief that, given sufficient audience, anyone can convince a majority of almost any position. It's the reason you have any number of pundits claiming that President Obama needs only to talk more and more kindly to the American people and the Republican-controlled House in order to get his agenda passed.
The truth is that Obama could probably have George Washington pop out of a time machine in the Rose Garden to tell the press why he believes in the Obama agenda, and the opposition still wouldn't budge.
Yet, the "green lantern" theory, or Aaron Sorkin syndrome, was on full display with the Wendy Davis filibuster in Texas. For those who missed it, Davis was filibustering Texas senate bill 5, which seeks to ban abortions past 20 weeks of gestation and put in place additional regulations for doctors who perform abortions. Davis managed to delay passing of the bill and, in the process, became a national celebrity.
Davis has appeared for many (fairly softball) national interviews and more than one column has appeared saying something along the lines of "don't mess with Texas". She has also been urged to run for governor in 2014 and hasn't exactly rejected the call.
The reason is simple: many probably saw a woman stand up for a cause she believed in and thought she'd somehow convince Texas of her side of the argument, either now or relatively soon. My guess is a decent percentage of these media pundits don't understand how conservative Texas is – or how little impact Davis' stand actually made in the state.
Texas hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. In that same year, Democrat Jimmy Carter carried states like Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina. No one, with the exception of Bill Clinton, has come within 10pt since.
Neither has a Democrat won the governor's mansion since Ann Richards in 1990, and no Democrat has come closer than 8pt of winning since that year. And did I mention that Republicans hold to 3:2 advantages in both houses of the Texas legislature?
Some might point to the ascendent Latino vote in Texas as a reason to hope to break the GOP lock on the state. (This is perhaps the most frustrating topic of discussion for anyone who lives in the real world of projecting electorate choices, instead of a fantasy "what it could be" land.) As Nate Cohn pointed out earlier this year, an up-to-date estimate of what Texas will look like in 11 years shows that Latinos will not be anywhere close to making up enough of the population to produce a Democratic victory in the presidential election. Unless there is a Democratic landslide nationwide, any Republican presidential candidate will probably win by double digits.
The math of Texas over the next dozen years is rather simple. Latinos might not even be 35% of the voting-eligible population by 2024, even as they are a larger share of the voting age population. Remember, you have to be a citizen to be able to vote, and a decent number of Latinos in Texas are not (yet). White non-Hispanics should maintain a majority of the vote.
That's key because, while polling in Texas is limited, we can infer that whites in Texas vote a lot more like those from South Carolina than those in New York. Add on the fact that Texas Latinos are not as overwhelmingly Democratic as they are nationwide, thanks in part to good Republican outreach, and what you have in Texas is an absolute sinkhole for the Democratic party.
That is the calculus I did after Davis' filibuster – which is why I came to the conclusion that however highly publicised, her legislative tactic wouldn't have much impact on Texas politics. Texas is a Republican state, which has elected Rick Perry as its governor three times; Davis was never going to change that. The polling conducted in the aftermath seems to back this thesis.
Public Policy Polling found that Davis would not only trail in a race for governor, but would trail by a lot. Perry would beat her 53-39%. This is a widening of Perry's margin from the last poll in January, when he lead by only 6pt. Davis does worse in a head-to-head with Perry than either former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White or San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, despite now having better name recognition than either of them.
Some might want to point out that Davis' net favorables are higher than Perry's net approval as a sign that she's made an impact. These people would be wise to remember that many more people had a favorable opinion of Elizabeth Colbert Busch than they did of Mark Sanford in South Carolina. It didn't matter. Sanford was a better ideological fit for the district, and he won by almost 10pt. These days, party affiliation is the name of the game.
The other issue with looking at Davis' favorables is that she has been treated to almost universally generous media attention. It would be difficult to not have a favorable opinion of her. Yet, simply on the merits of the bill she's protesting, the evidence is far from clear that she has made any difference in the court of public opinion.
When asked what their opinion of senate bill 5 was, the overwhelmingly answer was "not sure". It's fairly amazing that 52% aren't sure after all Davis' press. Perhaps people are paying more attention to the protester than what she is protesting. When people were read the specifics of the bill in a separate University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, the results were split depending on how the question was framed. Either way, most people don't seem to really know much about what Davis was filibustering.
I doubt it would make a difference whether Texans ultimately agreed or disagreed with Davis on senate bill 5. Abortion is one of many issues that go into voting choice, and clearly, any positive views towards abortion rights aren't strong enough to move Texans en masse toward the Democratic camp.
Texas is a strongly conservative Republican state and will remain one for the foreseeable future. Davis' feat of talking for 11 hours got great press, but it's not going to create a new Texas.