Poking the big red elephant might get you trampled.

On Tuesday that’s what happened to Democrats, whose efforts to win the Texas House and flip the state from red to blue were crushed by a tide of voters who gave Republicans victories up and down the ballot.

The GOP, somewhat humbled in 2018, adapted to the state’s changing political climate. Instead of a harbinger of a purple battleground, the success Democrats enjoyed two years ago served as a warning to Republicans, who got up off the mat and kept Texas red.

“The Republican Party was a little bit surprised by what happened two years ago,” said Democratic political consultant Jeff Dalton, an adviser for Dallas Democrat Joanna Cattanach’s unsuccessful rematch against state Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-University Park. “This time around they were just incredibly dedicated to defending their incumbents. You have to hand it to them.

As he did in 2018, Gov. Greg Abbott played a critical role in the GOP’s rebound. His operatives helped lead a coordinated campaign with candidates and conservative groups looking to protect GOP turf. In doing so, they proved that Texas, while more favorable to Democrats in some areas, is still firmly controlled by Republicans.

“It is a competitive state. We’re not a purple state, we’re not a swing state, but we’re competitive,” said Dave Carney, Abbott’s chief political consultant.

One of the biggest challenges Democrats had this election cycle was managing expectations. They boasted that Texas is a battleground state, and some operatives boldly predicted that former Vice President Joe Biden would beat President Donald Trump. As the election drew closer, Democrats and the media helped push a narrative that it was probable that the party would win the statehouse and do well with suburban voters. Some Republicans also feared the House was ready to flip.

It didn’t happen.

Raised expectations

Part of the problem was public polls that showed Biden and Trump in a dead heat. Those surveys were reported on and widely distributed by party leaders to supporters and political donors, raising expectations.

“The Republicans did a good job running their campaigns,” said Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “We need some time to determine what went wrong. Clearly there are some continued polling issues, which we see around the country.”

Turner said he didn’t regret that the party aimed high.

“Clearly we did not make the inroads we thought we would make,” Turner said. “Any time expectations are raised — organically and intentionally — and they are not met, it adds to second-guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking.”

But considering where the party was in 2014, when Abbott beat former state Sen. Wendy Davis by 20 percentage points, Democrats have the building blocks in place for future success. In a news release Wednesday, Texas Democrats touted winning an additional seat on the State Board of Education, winning appeals court slots and protecting the two congressional seats they picked up in 2018, including that of Dallas incumbent Colin Allred, who fended off Republican Genevieve Collins in District 32.

“There is no doubt that Texas Democrats have work to do. We have tough questions to ask ourselves,” the statement said. “There are significant challenges before us, and new solutions are required. The future of Texas is at stake.”

It went on to say that “any pundit who claims ‘Democrats lost Texas’ can’t see the forest for the trees.”

“We are in the strongest position we’ve been in years and we are no less optimistic about the movement we are building,” the statement read. “Texas is the biggest battleground state.”

But Republicans aren’t buying it.

“There is no way any Texas Democrat can spin what happened last night as anything other than an abysmal failure,” said former Dallas County Republican Party chairman Jonathan Neerman. “You’re running against Donald Trump. If you’re a Democrat, there is no easier way to fire up your base than to simply point to a picture of the president and say, ‘Go get him.’”

Driving the outcome

The coronavirus pandemic affected campaigns, putting candidates and their volunteers in the position of using virtual events or risking in-person contact as the virus was wreaking havoc.

Many Republican candidates held in-person campaign events and knocked on doors with staffers and volunteers.

In the District 24 congressional race, former Irving mayor and GOP nominee Beth Van Duyne never stopped campaigning in person, staging meetings with business and community leaders.

Her campaign manager, Chris Homan, said Van Duyne made personal contact with at least 10,000 voters.

“There was some trial and error, but we did it safely and it worked out for us,” Homan said, adding that when voters saw attack ads against Van Duyne on television, they weighed them against their meetings with her.

Van Duyne’s rival, former Carrollton-Farmers Branch School trustee Candace Valenzuela, rarely campaigned in person and for much of the summer did not have canvassers knocking on doors. She lives in a multigenerational home and was following best practices to avoid spreading the virus.

Van Duyne claimed victory in the contest, though Valenzuela hadn’t conceded.

In a state House race in Dallas County, Republican Will Douglas actively campaigned and knocked on doors during the pandemic, prompting incumbent Democrat Rhetta Bowers to walk and knock as well. She won.

Operatives from both parties agree that the Democrats’ ground game was hampered by a lack of in-person campaigning.

“I completely respect the decisions that were made by campaigns to care about public health,” said Dalton, the Democratic consultant. “But low-propensity voters sometimes need that personal touch. They need to have that face-to-face sense of urgency shared with them. We just didn’t do canvassing like we would normally do. We simply did not.”

Carney, the Abbott consultant, said the Democrats miscalculated with their “we’re not going to come spread COVID to your doorstep approach,” and that Republicans safely and effectively campaigned in person.

“That was a PR strategy that backfired,” he said, adding that many voters welcomed the conversations.

“People were dying to talk to people … that wasn’t, you know, the FedEx guy,” Carney said. “They wanted to engage in our conversations, which are usually about 30 to 45 seconds at the door.”

Dalton added that many Democratic candidates didn’t get the benefit of straight-ticket voting, which Republican lawmakers phased out after the 2018 election.

Issues and bad candidate match-ups could have also been problems.

Democrats had to defend accusations that they wanted to defund the police, and some candidates backed or gave tacit approval to such proposals. Others refused to criticize the Austin City Council for stripping millions from that city’s public safety budget. Democrats were also cast as supporting green energy plans that would wreck the Texas economy.

But more than anything else, Republicans were ready.

“I think 2018 was the canary in the coal mine,” Neerman said. “That’s going to go down as an aberration. Clearly they did not build on those victories.”