Texas Now a Majority-Minority State ("non-white majority population")

[deadparrot]

EL PASO, Texas - Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population, the U.S. Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Hispanics moving to the state.

According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities made up about 47 percent of the population in the second-largest state.

Texas joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii as states with majority-minority populations — with Hispanics the largest group in every state but Hawaii, where it is Asian-Americans.

Five other states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — aren't far behind, with about 40 percent minorities.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050811/ap_on_re_us/census_minorities

[last_texas_dem]

1. Interesting

With this news in mind, I'm hoping the Texas Democratic Party will be working harder than ever to register the still dramatically non-voting Latino population in Texas to vote and court their votes.

The 'pugs did a good job at appealing to the social conservatism of many Latinos in the '04 election on wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion and it paid off pretty well for Shrub. I believe Kerry did manage a tiny margin of victory among Texas Latinos, but I think the fact that Shrub did as well as he did is largely a reflection of the fact that more affluent, more likely Repug-voting Latinos are registered to vote in Texas. Majority-Latino counties in South Texas voted heavily for Kerry, but their voter turnout was low and, considering the low rate of voter registration among Latinos in Texas, I'm sure the voter registration in these poorer, largely disenfranchised areas was substantially lower than areas with more affluent Latino populations.

I think this news could eventually mean the end of the Repug lock on this state, but if and when this state becomes a competitive two-party state again could depend quite heavily on how the Democratic Party approaches our state's growing Latino population.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Texas should be, and, I hope, one day will be, a blue state. nt

[Turley]

2. Remember the Alamo? nt

.

[UTUSN]

4. Now, If Only the Majority-minorities Would Only VOTE n/t

[northzax]

5. this headline is incorrect

it should read "Texas is once again a caucasian-plurality state"