No, Donald Trump didn’t win Texas ‘by a lot’ in 2020, it was among the worst GOP victory margins in decades

WASHINGTON —Donald Trump falsely boasted during his campaign last fall that he’d won Texas by a “landslide” in 2016, and on Saturday night, he told another whopper about his popularity in Texas – this time about his performance in the 2020 campaign.

“We won Texas by a lot,” he claimed at a North Carolina GOP dinner.

That’s revisionist history, pure and simple.

Trump carried Texas last November by a margin of just 5.6 percentage points – even worse than his 9-point margin in Texas over Hillary Clinton four years earlier.

Only two GOP nominees have won Texas by a smaller margin since 1976, when President Gerald Ford lost the state and the White House to Democrat Jimmy Carter, 51-48.

Trump also lagged other Republicans running statewide last November, notably Sen. John Cornyn, who topped MJ Hegar by 9.6 points. Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright won by nearly as much.

So, it’s not as though Trump had coattails in Texas to brag about last fall, either.

His Texas margin of victory did seem like a lot compared to polls in early July, which showed a 5-point deficit. But that was Joe Biden’s high point in Texas and he effectively abandoned the state to focus elsewhere.

Texas had not been a battleground in decades before Trump’s anemic showing in 2016.

The single-digit victory margin put a scare into Republicans, who have no viable path to the White House without Texas because of Democratic dominance in California and New York.

Democrats smelled opportunity for the 2018 midterms, when Beto O’Rourke held Sen. Ted Cruz below 51%, the worst showing for any statewide Republican nominee since 1994.

As for the purported “landslide” over Clinton in 2016, Trump occasionally liked to make that claim, as he did while stumping in Ohio six weeks before Election Day last fall.

There’s no precise definition, but political scientists and campaign experts reserve the term “landslide” for an overwhelming victory, especially one that exceeds expectations and demoralizes the losing side.

A 9-point win is a comfortable margin. In 2016, Trump carried battlegrounds Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 1 point.

But in Texas, which still hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994, it’s not a margin for a Republican presidential nominee to brag about.

Trump’s 9-point win over Clinton was 7 points smaller than Mitt Romney’s victory margin in Texas four years earlier – and the lowest for a Republican nominee since Bob Dole’s 5-point squeaker in 1996 – though both Romney and Dole lost despite the support from deep red Texas.