As Texas results rolled in on election night, the answer to a long-pressing question came swiftly: Can Texas turn blue?
By 8:12 p.m. Nov. 5, a little more than an hour after polls closed, now President-elect Donald Trump had won Texas. He eventually won over Harris by 14 percentage points. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz defeated U.S. Rep. Colin Allred by nine points.
The numbers reaffirmed the Republican Party’s dominance of Texas. Democrats didn’t just underperform — they lost by bigger margins than in previous election cycles, and former strongholds flipped red. What’s left is a continuously weakening case that Texas is a battleground state.
Democrats also lost three seats in the Texas Legislature and nearly every contested state appellate court race and saw Republicans win 10 countywide judicial races in Harris County — reversing several years of Democratic dominance in Texas’ largest county.
“What seems clear to me from the 2024 results is that Democrats don’t seem to have a clear message that the voters are buying,” said Mark Hand, political science assistant professor.
Every election cycle, the state is seen as a potential flip for Democrats although Texans haven’t elected a Democrat to a statewide position since 1994. The last time Texas went blue for a presidential candidate was in 1976 for Jimmy Carter.
“The Democrats probably have a lot of soul searching to do here on what is the message that is as clear and as strong as the message that Donald Trump and more MAGA-leaning conservatives have offered to voters,” Hand said.
Texas Democrats need a real rebuilding cycle if they want to be competitive, he said.
The process has already begun.
Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas Democratic Party chair, announced his resignation Nov. 8, three days following the election. He will step down in March when the party’s governing executive committee is scheduled to meet.
“In the days and weeks to come, it is imperative that our Democratic leaders across the country reevaluate what is best for our party and embrace the next generation of leaders to take us through the next four years of Trump and win back seats up and down the ballot,” Hinojosa said in a statement.
‘The nation’s biggest battleground state’
At the Democratic National Convention in August, Hinojosa declared Texas as “the nation’s biggest battleground state.”
In 2016, Trump won Texas by nine percentage points over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. When President Joe Biden overperformed four years later, he still lost Texas by over five percentage points.
Even when former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke almost won over Cruz in 2018 and built further hopes that the Lone Star State may turn blue, that’s all it was — almost. O’Rourke lost by fewer than three percentage points.
That year, however, Texas Democrats flipped state House districts, local government seats and state appeals courts. Republicans still controlled the Legislature and occupied every statewide office, but Democrats saw that year as the beginning of a new era.
The data points in 2018 and 2020 may have led people to think Texas might flip to blue, Hand said. Nationally, 2018 was a bloodbath for Republicans, and O’Rourke was one of the politicians who rode and powered the Democratic wave.
Four years later, Republicans performed well in Texas and Democrats didn’t, including O’Rourke’s loss to Gov. Greg Abbott by double digits, Hand said.
Tarrant County is on ‘the redder side of purple than blue’
Texas Democrats saw certain bright spots in this election.
In Tarrant County, considered a key battleground area in the state, Allred received over 1,000 more votes than Cruz. In 2020, Biden also won the county by less than 2,000 votes. Trump flipped it back in 2024 with more than 42,000 votes over Harris.
Texas Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, was reelected for his seventh term in Texas House District 101, which covers UTA.
Overall, Republicans had a good Election Day in Tarrant County, Turner said, but he saw the Senate race as an encouraging sign: Cruz has lost the county twice in a row, and voters are willing to split their ticket.
“Since 2018, it is clear it is a purple county,” he said. “It’s still obviously a little on the redder side of purple than blue objectively, if you look at the results in this election, but purple nonetheless.”
More Republicans moved from Tarrant County to Parker County in 2020, and more Democrats moved from Dallas County to Tarrant County in that time frame, said Jay Popp, one of Tarrant County’s GOP precinct chairs in west Arlington.
“We kind of recognized that and thought, ‘OK, well, we need to start getting engaged, or we really need to get those efforts out and be more grassroots-oriented,’” Popp said.
Since the Biden administration started, Tarrant County Republicans have worked together in trying to recruit people, said Jan Brand, longtime board member of Republican Women of Arlington.
She sent letters to 100 local pastors and held social events like luncheons for recruitment efforts and community relationship building, Brand said.
“Once you create those relationships, then it’s more likely that they’re going to get involved,” she said.
‘They’re not grassroots. They’re definitely top-down’
Texas Republicans are well-funded and well-organized, Hand said. The party has a handful of massive donors, including West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. Influential billionaire Elon Musk may contribute to state-level elections in 2026.
Abbott is also one of the best fundraisers in the country, Hand said. That type of consistent fundraising machinery is what Texas Democrats need to stay competitive and distance themselves from the national party.
Texans are more conservative than national voters, and that hasn’t changed, Hand said. People believe that as the state becomes more diverse, it will become more liberal, but that also doesn’t seem to have played out.
Turner disagreed that it’s a matter of organization. Instead, it’s a resource situation, with the Republican Party always well-funded, he said.
He believes the Democratic Party in Tarrant County and Texas have to raise more money, start earlier and communicate with a broader segment of the electorate to build out bigger and faster campaigns — like Republicans, he said.
Popp’s party has been effective in understanding the importance of turning the area from the roots up rather than being a top-down organization, he said.
“That’s actually where the Democrats are failing right now,” he said. “They’re not grassroots. They’re definitely top-down. They’re kind of being told what to do and what to believe and how to believe it and I think that never worked.”
The question of border, economy
Democrats did not get the needed turnout from big urban counties, Turner said. The party also needs to confront a major challenge in South Texas from Rio Grande Valley to El Paso.
Once a Democratic stronghold, South Texas border counties, where most voters are Hispanic, shifted to Trump. The switch is part of a national trend of Hispanic voters embracing Trump and Republican candidates, from rural communities to large cities like Miami and parts of states like New York and New Jersey.
Nationwide this year, 55% of Latino voters supported Harris, and 45% voted for Trump, according to the Associated Press. In 2020, President Joe Biden got 63% while Trump received 35%.
In 2024, Trump won 12 of 14 South Texas counties. In 2016, he won five.
“We need to figure out why that is and do the work necessary to reverse those trends,” Turner said.
AP VoteCast, a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, found that 41% of Texans listed the economy and jobs as the most important issue facing the country in 2024.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, Turner said. That is a difficult number for the party in power to overcome, but there’s still plenty of room to look at strategies, tactics, messaging and get-out-the-vote operations.
“There really has to be an in-depth, reasoned analysis done of this election, and we have to look at things top to bottom,” he said.
The future
Hand said he expects to see very conservative policies nationally, but even more so in Texas, when the Legislature starts in January.
Turner said he hopes Texans will be engaged in the Legislature.
“I hope Texans will let the Legislature know when Republicans are going off on some wild partisan tangent instead of addressing the real issues facing our state,” he said.
The Tarrant County GOP’s goal is to elect conservative candidates to city councils and school boards, Popp said.
“I feel great,” he said. “I feel really optimistic, with a lot of hope and enthusiasm about the momentum that’s behind our party.”
On election night, Popp was at a watch party in Tarrant County when he noticed a big group.
Popp chatted with them. They told him they weren’t happy with the nation’s direction nor school boards and city councils. They wanted to be part of the Republican Party and voted for Trump.
He is used to hearing that. The GOP usually attracts older groups of people.
This group, though, was different. There were more than a dozen guys. Different races. All under 30.
Popp said he is hopeful for the future of the Republican Party in Texas.
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