As each election for public office nears, the mass media reminds us that elections are both highly-charged symbolic rituals of democracy and key procedural components of our political institutions. Both aspects of elections - symbolic and procedural - serve critical functions at all levels of our political system.

Given the importance of elections, it's not surprising that they are also a major focus of collective fretting and extensive analysis and commentary. Why don't more people vote? Why do they vote the way they do? Why are campaigns so expensive and so negative? Why is the media so obsessed with polls?

In Texas, concerns about voting and elections are colored by political changes in recent decades (discussed at length in the Texas Politics chapter on Political Parties). Texans display many of the same basic tendencies of voting and non-voting as other Americans. The contests and characters on display in the 2008 campaign provided ample illustration of the particular forces at work in the Texas electoral universe. The Republican Party remains dominant after a decade that saw battles over congressional redistricting, intense and sometimes bitter campaigning among candidates both within and between the parties, increasingly expensive campaigning up and down the ballot, and the continuing courtship of the growing Latino population, to name just the most prominent factors.

Nationally the election of Barack Obama and of a Democratic US House and Senate appears to suggest a growing Democratic power. Texas, however, bucked national trends and voted firmly for Republican John McCain and will send a majority Republican delegation to Congress. What role Texas will play as a leader nationally in the new political minority and whether Republicans will be able to hold onto their lead in state level races remains to be seen.