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All this week, NPR is taking a look at the demographic changes that could reshape the political landscape in Texas over the next decade — and what that could mean for the rest of the country.

Democrats see opportunity in Texas' fast-growing Latino population. But the Republican Party is strong in Texas — very strong.

Nearly two-thirds of the Texas Legislature stands with the GOP. Republican candidates have won 100 statewide elections in a row — and they're beating Democrats by a margin of between 13 and 18 percentage points.

It's a confident-looking group — nattily dressed and smiling — that gathers on an early Saturday morning in Austin for the State Republican Executive Committee meeting. Even the state chairman of the Texas High School Republicans has come with his fiddle to play the national anthem.

Matt Pinnell, the state party director for the Republican National Committee, has come down from Washington, D.C., to address them: "In my role as the state party director of the RNC, it's my job to make sure that state parties are healthy — and I can tell you emphatically that the Texas Republican Party is a very well-run machine."

This is a very different party from when George W. Bush walked the streets of South Texas in bluejeans and cowboy boots and courted Texas Hispanics with his lousy but lovable Spanish. Those days are gone.

Now Tea Party favorite Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn lead the fight against the immigration bill. And that has Democrats, both inside and outside Texas, rubbing their hands with anticipation. They envision Hispanic voters flocking their way; demography will then become destiny, and the Republicans in Texas will be overwhelmed by sheer Hispanic numbers.

And most everyone agrees that someday that's probably what is going to happen. But the $64 question is: When is "someday"?

Counting Votes

"Texas is not likely to become blue anytime soon," says Allen Blakemore, a veteran Republican political consultant from Houston.

Blakemore is in the business of counting votes.

"Hispanic participation is so low right now, I don't think anybody knows where the Hispanics are going to be 10 years from now," he says.

Although there were no exit polls, there is no dispute that Hispanic turnout in Texas in 2012 was low — very low. And the Republican-dominated Legislature is working to keep it that way by drawing election districts that provide little competition.

If there are few competitive races down ballot — say, for the Texas House of Representatives — Democrats stay home. Why bother going to the polls if the outcome is predetermined? Republicans, of course, know this, and Blakemore says he expects the GOP will redraw the lines again in their favor in 2020.

"If you hold the majority when you draw the maps, you should be able to hold the majority throughout the decade," he says. "Certainly that's the planning and preparation that goes into a redistricting map."

A Split Party

But demographic changes can be held back through creative cartography for only so long. And so the Texas GOP announced last month that it will add nearly two dozen new staffers — most of whom will organize Texas Hispanics. The Koch brothers have pledged $8 million to the Texas GOP to fight off the new Democratic organizing effort called Battleground Texas.

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