About Texas

Texas defies easy summary. It is the second largest state by area and the second most populous. It produces more oil than any other state, and more wind energy than any other state. It contains the fourth-largest city in the United States (Houston) and the fastest-growing major city in America (Austin). Its border with Mexico, 1,254 miles, shapes everything from its economy to its culture to its politics.

Texas was an independent republic for nine years before joining the United States, and that history is not merely folklore, it informs how Texans govern, how they tax (no state income tax), and how they talk about themselves. The state has its own power grid, its own mythology, and an instinctive suspicion of federal authority that runs across party lines.

Modern Texas is reliably Republican at the statewide level, but its major cities, Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, vote heavily Democratic. Demographic change driven by immigration and corporate relocation has made Texas genuinely competitive in presidential elections for the first time in a generation, and political analysts watch it more closely than almost any other state.