Texas Democrats have long viewed the state’s growing Hispanic population as a ticket to eventually breaking the GOP’s dominance. However, Tuesday night showed that the GOP has made significant gains in turning away those voters, and nowhere was that more evident than at the border.
After years of losing the Latino vote statewide by double digits, Republicans set a new high with Donald Trump winning 55% of the critical voting bloc, surpassing Vice President Kamala Harris’ 44%. according to exit polls.
In traditionally Democratic strongholds along the border, Trump managed a near sweep.
He won 14 of the 18 counties within 20 miles of the border, more than double his impressive 2020 showing in the Latino-majority region. He carried all four counties in the Rio Grande Valley just eight years after winning just 29% in the region, an accomplishment that included giving 97% of Hispanic Star County to Republicans for the first time since 1896. And while he lost El Paso, one of the most populous border counties, he squeezed margins there in a way not seen in decades.
His gains along the border were the largest for a Republican presidential candidate in 30 years, surpassing even Texan George W. Bush’s 2004 gains.
Trump’s success in appealing to Latinos has been evident across the country since he became the first Republican presidential nominee. win Miami-Dade County for more than three decades and nearly doubled his share of the Latino vote in Pennsylvaniaeven after the comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of trash” at one of his rallies. But Trump’s performance has been especially impressive in Texas, where Democrats have practically staked their fortunes on the idea that as long as the state’s Hispanic electorate grows and remains solidly blue, Republicans will one day stop winning statewide elections.
In addition to dominating the presidential race, Republicans saw other advantages along the border. US Representative Monica De La Cruzrepublican from edinburgh took a key place in the Republican Party gained a foothold in the Rio Grande Valley, and Republicans won a state Senate seat and two state House districts in South Texas that had previously been held by Democrats. US Senator Ted Cruzwho won re-election with a Latino majority, said the results represented a “generational shift.”
Democrats saw their bright spots. Eddie Morales Jrthe state representative for the sprawling border district that stretches from Eagle Pass to El Paso held on to his seat Tuesday, albeit narrowly winning two years after winning by a more comfortable 12-point margin. US representative Henry CuellarDemocrat from Laredo, also defeated an unexpectedly narrow edge about 5 percentage points against the GOP challenger, whom he vastly outnumbered.
Joshua Blank, director of research at the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said it’s too early to say whether Republican gains will continue or extend beyond Trump himself. But, Blank said, Democrats would be wise to worry about whether that shift can last.
Trump’s success among Latinos seemed to stem from an understanding that in places like Texas, many Latinos “think of themselves as multiracial” and grew up in communities where race and ethnicity are not at the fore, Blank said. Trump targeted Hispanic men, who rarely vote, by appealing “to their pocketbooks, to their masculinity, to their place in culture and society, but not directly to their racial and ethnic minority identity.”
“Does this mean that these voters will remain in the Republican column? We don’t know. Does this mean they will support someone not named Donald Trump? It is not clear, – said Blank. “But he changed the terms of the debate in a way that I think Democrats are uncomfortable with.”
Similar to his appeal in other constituencies, Trump has won over Latinos by pinning economic problems on Harris that many blame — rightly and wrongly — on President Joe Biden.
University of Houston political science professor Geronimo Cortino said Trump’s task now will be to fulfill his promises to improve the economic condition of voters. And he said he expects voters to hold Trump accountable if he doesn’t. Cortino noted that many Latinos supported Bush’s re-election in 2004 only to leave the Republican Party for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 amid a worsening economy.
“Restructuring happens when sustainable change happens, and right now it’s not clear that we have that,” Cortina said.
He also said it was too early to tell whether Trump’s appeal — let alone the GOP — was anything other than fleeting because Latinos still tend to favor Democrats in local races.
One such example is the sheriff’s race in Val Verde County, nearly three hours west of San Antonio.
in that race Democrat Joe Frank Martinez held on to his seat, defeating his Republican rival with 57% of the vote, even as Trump won the district with 63% of the vote.
According to Martinez, Project Red TX, a GOP-backed PAC, initially tried to get him to switch parties. When he declined, the PAC endorsed his opponent, who ran a campaign focused on immigration, even though it’s not the sheriff’s job.
This year, the group supported more than 50 local candidates, primarily in border areas. Three candidates she supported in Val Verde County lost, though Wayne Hamilton, a veteran Republican who chairs the group, noted that he also supported a number of local candidates who won their races with Trump, who carried the district in first place. One such case was in Jim Wells County, where Trump won 57% and the Democrat sheriff was narrowly edged out by the Republicans.
Hamilton said Latinos living on or near the border have flocked to Trump because of what they see as the Biden administration’s “collapse of border control and failure to do their job” in keeping more migrants from crossing into Texas.
The record number of arrivals overwhelmed the border infrastructure in many settlements. There are about 20,000 in Val Verde mostly Haitian migrants arrived almost immediately in 2021, forcing officials to close the international port of entry while they figured out how to respond to the situation.
The public outcry was most acute, Hamilton said, in high-poverty counties, where residents were more likely to feel that their community was “taken over by people who are even poorer, with even greater needs.”
Hamilton noted that Trump has turned Starr by 16 points this year, a 76-point turnaround from his 60-point deficit in 2016.
After the vote, however, Democrats, including the incumbent sheriff, managed to hold onto their positions despite aggressive campaigns from Republicans. “All the Democratic candidates have all won, so the Trump presidency is basically an isolated place,” said Starr County Democratic Chairwoman Jessica Vera.
Still, she said, if national and state Democrats want to keep the district blue, they need to work together with local leaders to connect with voters.
Hamilton said some newly converted Trump voters may feel less inclined to vote against their local Democratic incumbents, especially in smaller border counties, because they tend to be known in the community.
“The further you go down the ballot, it gets more personal,” Hamilton said. “This isn’t the guy I see on TV, is it? This is the guy I go to Mass with.’
Local Democratic representatives, including Sylvia Bruni in Webb County, a longtime Democratic stronghold, said they alerted their state and national headquarters about the Republican gains in their districts. But she said she received little support and instead had to rely almost entirely on the funds her group could raise on its own.
That won’t be good enough in the future, Bruni said. “We need help.”
