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Texas
The Lone Star State, second-largest in area and population
Texas is so large it functions almost as a region of its own — 268,596 square miles (695,662 km²), bigger than any country in Western Europe, and second only to Alaska among the states. It is also the second most populous, with more than 31 million people. Its sheer size means it spans several distinct landscapes: piney woods and bayous in the humid east, blackland prairie and Hill Country in the center, the vast High Plains of the Panhandle in the north, and true desert and mountains out west, where the only real peaks rise.
The land tilts and dries as you move west. The Gulf Coast, with its barrier islands and the marshes around the great ports, gives way to rolling prairie, then to the limestone Hill Country at the edge of the Edwards Plateau, riddled with springs and caves. Farther west the Chihuahuan Desert takes over, climbing to Guadalupe Peak, the state high point at 8,751 feet (2,667 m). The Rio Grande draws the entire southern and western border in a 1,200-mile arc, carving Big Bend's deep canyons along the way.
Water and climate divide Texas as sharply as terrain. A line running roughly down the middle separates the wetter, greener east from the dry west — rainfall drops from over 50 inches a year on the Louisiana border to under 10 in the far west. This gradient shaped everything from cotton and cattle to the location of cities, and it makes droughts and floods recurring facts of Texan life.
That immense and varied geography underwrites an economy that would rank among the world's largest on its own — oil and gas from multiple basins, cattle on the western ranges, agriculture in the river valleys, and booming Sun Belt cities. Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin are all among the largest in the country, anchoring a state whose scale is its defining feature.
Economy
Texas has the second-largest economy of any U.S. state, and on its own it would rank among the largest national economies in the world. Energy is the traditional core - the oil and gas of the Permian Basin and the Gulf Coast refineries make it the country's leading energy producer - but the economy has broadened dramatically into technology around Austin, aerospace and medicine in Houston, banking in Dallas, and cattle and cotton across its vast rural land. The absence of a state income tax and abundant cheap land have drawn a steady stream of corporate relocations.
Politics
Texas carries 40 electoral votes, second only to California, and it has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980. Its politics are shaped by rapid growth and a diversifying population - the big metros of Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio lean Democratic, while rural areas remain strongly Republican, which makes the fast-growing suburbs the contested ground. State government in Austin has been controlled by Republicans for decades.