Lone Star Letdown
Lone Star Letdown
How Texas tells the story of Tuesday’s Democratic disappointment.
Democratic dreams of a blue Texas stretch back a decade. “Could Hillary Clinton win Texas?” wrote the New York Times in 2016. “Yes, Texas is a swing state in this election,” argued Beto O’Rourke in a 2020 Washington Post op-ed. An exploding Hispanic population joined with well-educated white suburbs seemed a combination destined for a Democratic win.
Those dreams took a big step backwards Tuesday after an emphatic 14-point statewide win from Donald Trump.
In many ways, the Texas story is the national story: red shifts among working-class Latinos—regardless of geography—combined with unexpected suburban reversion powered Trump to a popular vote victory.
Let’s start with the Dallas metro area. A large portion of recent Democratic gains in Texas owed to huge shifts in Dallas, Tarrant, Denton, and Collin counties. Between 2012 and 2020, they each swung between 15 and 27 points to the left, netting Democrats hundreds of thousands of suburban votes. Biden came within single digits of winning Denton and Collin, while actually flipping Tarrant.
This leftward march seemed inexorable—particularly as Trump remained at the top of the ticket. It was a logic that many Democrats applied to suburbs nationwide: surely Harris will beat Biden’s numbers in places like Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and Oakland County, Michigan. “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia,” proclaimed Chuck Schumer in 2016. Not quite.
Tarrant flipped back to Trump. Collin and Denton shifted seven and five points to the right, respectively. Dallas lurched nearly 10 points rightward as Harris underperformed even Clinton’s 2016 showing. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, too, the once-inevitable blue suburban shifts not only stopped, but reversed.
There are notable exceptions: Wisconsin’s “WOW” counties moved left, as did much of suburban and exurban Atlanta. But the lesson for Democrats remains: Trump’s presence is not a guarantee that well-educated, white suburbs will keep breaking your way.
South Texas, meanwhile, was a bloodbath. Rural or urban, rich or poor, nearly the entire Lower Rio Grande Valley bolted away from Democrats for the second cycle in a row. Just eight years after Hillary Clinton swept the region—often carrying counties by 50+ points—the Trump takeover is complete.
After shocking swings in 2020, most Democrats did expect another jump to the right in South Texas. But few anticipated the severity. Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy, and Cameron all flipped to Trump, each swinging right by around 20 points. Not since the 19th century had Starr County voted for a Republican presidential candidate!
Though similar in magnitude, there is an important distinction between the 2016-2020 and 2020-2024 swings. From Clinton to Biden, vote totals in the Rio Grande Valley shot upwards—in some places close to a 50 percent turnout increase. Trump won the vast majority of these new voters, pushing down the Democratic margin even as Biden received nearly the same number of votes as Clinton.
This year, however, Trump won on persuasion rather than turnout. Vote totals across the region stayed about the same, but Trump flipped thousands of Biden 2020 voters. As Democrats regroup, this is a more worrying finding: Trump didn’t just engage infrequent, low-information voters, he won over Texas Latinos who have been voting solidly Democratic for decades.
Harris’s collapse with Texas Latinos reached all corners. In the heart of McAllen (Hidalgo County), there was a cluster of precincts that bucked the 2020 trend and actually shifted left. Still 70 percent or more Hispanic, the area is urban, comparatively very wealthy, and highly educated—exactly the type of place Democrats expect to be improving. This year, however, the cluster shifted six points to the right and flipped to Trump.
Further north, Harris carried the Latino areas of Houston by only 20 points—a 16-point shift right from 2020. In metro areas across the country, from Miami to Milwaukee to New York City, we saw similarly large shifts with urban Latinos. Nationally, though we don’t have specific numbers for Latinos, non-white urban voters went from Biden +60 to Harris +44, according to AP VoteCast.
A silver lining for Democrats? Trump enthusiasm from Texas Latinos has yet to translate into straight-ticket Republican voting. These are not committed conservatives—many voted for Trump, but Democratic candidates down-ballot. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzales, for example, survived in their South Texas districts thanks to sizable ticket splitting. Many other Trump voters simply left the rest of their ballot blank.
Presidential preferences do often trickle down-ballot eventually, but there is still time for Democrats to win back this crucial constituency. In the meantime, dreams of a blue Texas are on hold.
Dems are lucky border district voters, just voted Rep, rather than filling the Rio Grande with tea, and withholding their federal income tax payments. Most of America, has no idea what, mostly Hispanic, American border residents, have endured since Biden/Harris took office.
Our Neighbors, drained their savings and retirement accounts, to buy another home, 5 hours from their ancestral border ranch. Daily, groups of men, traipsed thru their property, leaving, literally, tons of trash. Cut fences, allowed cattle to wander. Entire ranch water systems, are broken for a single migrant drink. Fields are contaminated, when utilized as restrooms. Ranchers are going broke. Selling is unthinkable . Who would buy such a property, except the Cartels, who would then reside next to, your remaining friends and extended family?
Our neighbors endured the above, but finally had to leave, due to safety concerns. The kids could not play outside without armed guard. Driving anywhere, unarmed, was not possible, where car trouble can equal death. Large groups of men, would regularly walk thru K-12 school yards, during the middle of the school day, necessitating school lock downs. The father now endures multi 10 hour roundtrips a week. He traded time with his children, for their physical safety.
These are tax paying Americans, residing, in a quasi war zone, purposefully caused by Dems, for years. Imagine herds of unvetted, migrant men walking thru the playgrounds of Palo Alto and Georgetown, for years . How long would residents on Martha's Vineyard or Chicago's North shore, endure groups of strange men, banging on their front doors and children's bedroom windows, in the middle of the night, looking for food , water, and Lord knows, what else?
Election Day wasn't a warning. It was a Declaration of Independence. Hispanic Americans are done, playing 2nd class citizens, for a Dem Party, far more concerned with illegal border crossers, than Hispanic Border Americans. Dems are kidding themselves , if they think these voters are ever returning to the fold, if Trump stops the onslaught.
The real lesson is that policies matter over personalities. These Texas communities have been wreaked by the Biden-Harris immigration policies and, as middle-class Americans, prove that inflation respects no ethnicity. If Democrats expect to turn "Texas blue," they're going to need to get outside their Acela corridor bubbles and spend time with these folks, and adjust their policies and agendas accordingly. Bernie Sanders gets it better than anyone in the party.