Texas ranks dead last in education, healthcare, and most indicators of quality of life. Clearly, it can't be better than any other state, unless your compared metrics are restricted to "no taxes" or "cheap housing".
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/upshot/surprise-florida...
Don't worry about the political climate too much though. Plenty of Californians are moving here, many intent on advocating for the same policies here that caused them to flee their state in the first place.
And: > Plenty of Californians are moving here, many intent on advocating for the same policies here
Let's hope they succeed. Texas delenda est and all that.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-st...
The upshot is that TX and FL perform very well when demographics are adjusted for; which is to say, it's a much easier job to teach reading to eighth-generation Americans in Iowa or Connecticut than to kids who arrived in the US last week.
Highest percentage of residents over age 25 without a high school diploma
Lowest funding of mental health care
Lowest funding of legal services for the poor
Lowest average credit score
Lowest voter participation
Highest percentage of uninsured residents
Highest per-capita gasoline consumption
Highest level of cancer-causing compounds released into the air/ground/water
Searching on other factors reveals other bits, like that Texas is:
40th in obesity
48th in child immunizations
46th in teen pregnancy
These are from a ton of different news stories and statistical summaries from 2008-2015, so I'm sure a bunch are out of date. The point being that in many ways the Texas stereotype is backed up by real-world data. It's also interesting to see the things that Texas is good at that you would not expect based on stereotypes of Texas like levels of smoking (5th), drug deaths (7th), etc.
http://web.archive.org/web/20150401050939/https://www.texast...