I worked in Texas elections for ten years and studied trends and I know for damn sure that Republican show up in a non-presidential year and Democrats numbers are low in off years. It's a matter of education - Republicans tend to know more about how politics works and they will show up to vote, period. Democrats are not that keen on politics, likely don't know who represents them but they do know who the president is so more vote in a presidential year. It happens the same way every single time.
As far as reaching others, the state party has opened Republican offices now, this year, in more Spanish speaking population areas in order to get the conservative message out to them. The Texas Republican Party is not stupid and are pouring money into this effort to open more offices.
An open Republican county office when there is no Democrat office, is a winner as we used this method to get our Republican message to our county and we turned that county from Democrat to Republican. Part of our effort was to have big signs directing people to our office right across from the courthouse.
My husband was the county chair and one time he made a big sign and put it on the front door saying something like, “Due to the large turnout for the election, Republicans will vote on Tuesday and Democrats will vote on Wednesday.” You see the election was on TUESDAY. Well, the woman Democrat chairman saw that sign and went stomping into the county clerk's office demanding to know why they had changed the date Democrats vote. One of our people was in the clerks office area at that time and called my husband to say the sign was causing hell at the courthouse. We all laughed our heads off and later he removed that sign. My husband was always saying, humorously, that he thought Democrats put a sign at graveyard with the date of early voting so those buried there could vote early. :o)
check 48.
thats funny as hell. I put the same sign in the back window of my car. Before I was kicked off a liberal board, I preached it like it was the truth. The low info people bought it hook line and sinker. I spun it like this, Obama said to reduce voter intimidation and disenfranchisement, Republicans vote on Tuesday and Dems on Wednesday.
All Jokes aside, I still feel like we conservative Texans best no get complacent.