In the mid-1980s, political consultant Royal Masset and GOP pollster Mike Baselice saw something dramatic in the numbers.

Although Texas had been a one-party Democratic state for 100 years since the Civil War, a tectonic shift on the political landscape was about to happen.

"Even before Republicans had control of the Statehouse, we knew it was inevitable," said Masset. "We knew we would peak in the 1990s and really run the place. And we thought we would control Texas until about 2020 when Hispanics would be large enough in numbers that we'd start losing."

The demographic change that reshaped Texas in the 1990s, bringing Republicans to power, now appears to be reshaping the state again – much as Masset predicted 20 years ago.

By the most obvious measures, Texas is a ruby-red Republican state.

No Democrat has won a statewide election since 1994. Republicans control the Legislature, the congressional delegation and both Senate seats. John McCain beat Barack Obama last year with 55 percent of the vote.

And yet, the demographic trends suggest a different destiny in the not-too-distant future.

Consider the electorate's four major demographic groups – white voters, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians and other minorities.

Now, much as journalist Ron Brownstein posited on the national level, assume that each group in Texas voted exactly as they did in the last presidential race. Then imagine that each group represented the share of the electorate it had in 1992 (more voters were white, fewer were black and Hispanic).

McCain would have won Texas with nearly 62 percent of the vote. Instead of winning by 11 points, as he did last year, he would have won by 24 points had the "old" Texas of 1992 been voting.

So while Obama and the Democrats lost in Texas, the groups that benefit them most are growing.

From 1992 to 2008, the share of the vote cast by Hispanics in Texas has doubled – from 10.4 to 20 percent, according to exit polls. Obama got about two-thirds of the Hispanic vote in the state.

The African-American vote, which went overwhelmingly for Obama, has risen from 11 to 13 percent.

But the percentage of the electorate that is white has fallen from 79 to 63 percent.

McCain trounced Obama among white Texas voters – 73 percent supported him. But whites make up a smaller percentage of the total vote than they used to.

Moreover, according to exit polls, the younger you were, the more likely you were to vote for Obama. That can't be good news for the Republican Party as it looks to the future.

Most significant among the demographic shifts reshaping Texas politics is the rise of the Hispanic vote – which mirrors the growth of the Hispanic population but has yet to fully represent it at the ballot box.

Hispanics constitute nearly 35 percent of the state's population but amounted to 20 percent of the vote in November.

Many are too young to vote or are non-citizens. More important, the focus in South Texas is traditionally about turning out voters in the Democratic primary where local races are decided, not the general election.

Rural Texas, largely white and staunchly Republican, is losing population. Urban areas are growing, and with that growth has come intimations of a Democratic resurgence – Democrats taking control of the Dallas County courthouse in 2006 and winning big in Harris County last year.

Republicans have lost 12 seats in the Texas House in the last six years – in part because of demographic shifts that have helped Democrats win in historically Republican suburbs.

As it turns out, the rise of the Republican majority in Texas in the 1990s appears less like an escalator up to the next floor than an elevator going up, then down.

In 2005, Texas became a majority-minority state, according to the Census Bureau.

For the GOP, that should be a clarion call that the party must do a better job attracting minorities – especially Hispanics. Masset said the immigration debate isn't helping.

"We sound so angry at Latinos when you hear people's voices on talk radio," he said. "We're really losing them faster than we thought they would."

Still, Texas isn't on the verge of turning blue.

Baselice, the Republican pollster, said the GOP still has a 5-point advantage in statewide races and predicted that significant Democratic gains are still years away.

"I don't think it's even yet," said Baselice. "But then, that's why we have elections. We have a new scorecard every two years."

Looking ahead to 2020, population projections suggest that Hispanics will outnumber whites in Texas. The black population share will remain largely unchanged. And a growing Asian population will be about 6 percent.

To understand what that means for the political landscape, imagine this: the major demographic groups voted as they did in 2008, but in proportions equal to their expected share of the population in 2020.

What if the electorate of Texas' future had voted last year?

Obama would have beaten McCain by 5 points.