Gallup: Texas No Longer GOP-Leaning

Gallup has ranked the states by party preference, and while some of its findings are unsurprising—Wyoming and Utah are once again the most Republican states, with Massachusetts and Maryland the most Democratic—big changes are underway in Texas, one of the biggest election prizes of them all. According to Gallup, which asked people which party they belonged to or which way they leaned if they were independents, the GOP advantage in Texas has shrunk to just 3.9%, below both the 10% that would class it as solid Republican and the 5% that would make it GOP-leaning, reports the Houston Chronicle, which notes that the 3.9% advantage still adds up to more than a million voters.

Texas is now one of 18 states classed as competitive, with 15 solid or leaning Republican and 17 solid or leaning Democratic. Gallup notes that the new totals reflect a "significant movement away from the Democratic Party" since 2008, when 29 states were solidly Democratic and another six were Democrat-leaning; just five were solid or leaning GOP. But the Democrats still have the advantage nationwide, the pollsters say, since heavily populated states like California and New York favor the Democrats, while GOP states tend to be lightly populated ones like Wyoming, which has the strongest party preference of any state with a GOP advantage of 35.5%. (A Gallup poll last year found that half the people in Illinois want to leave the state.)