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Texas Democrats have long seen the state’s growing Latino population as the ticket to finally breaking Republican dominance. But Tuesday night showed that Republicans have made significant progress in alienating these voters, and nowhere was that more evident than along the border.
Exit polls show that after years of Republicans losing the statewide Latino vote by double digits, Donald Trump won 55% of the key voting bloc, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ share. The highest standard was set at over 44%.
Trump won almost overwhelmingly in traditional Democratic strongholds along the border.
He won 14 of the 18 counties within 20 miles of the border, doubling his 2020 performance, which drew attention in Latino-majority areas. He took control of all four Rio Grande Valley counties just eight years after winning only 29% of the country. This feat included giving 97% of Latino star counties to Republicans First time since 1896. And while it lost El Paso, one of the most populous counties on the border, it closed the gap there in a way not seen in decades.
Counties along the border continue to flip
Trump was the top vote-getter in most of the counties along the Texas-Mexico border in 2024. This continues the trend of border counties voting more conservatively in presidential elections. It shows the number of counties that voted for each party’s candidate in each election since 1996.
Note: Unofficial results for 2024. Credit: Source: Texas Secretary of State. Map: Dan Keemahill/ProPublica and Texas Tribune.
His advance along the border is the biggest by a Republican presidential candidate in at least 30 years, and it even exceeds the advance made by Texas native George W. Bush in 2004.
Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Miami-Dade County in more than 30 years, nearly doubling his share of the Latino vote in Pennsylvania even though the comedian was in first place. Mr. Trump’s success in appealing to communities with large populations of American Americans was evident across the country. At his rallies, he referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of trash.” But President Trump’s performance has been particularly strong in Texas. In Texas, Democrats are essentially tying their fate to the idea that as long as the state’s Latino electorate continues to grow and stay reliably blue, Republicans will one day no longer be able to win statewide elections.
In addition to their advantage in the presidential race, Republicans made other gains along the border. Republican U.S. Rep. Monica de la Cruz from Edinburg retains a key Republican seat in the Rio Grande Valley, and Republicans hold a state Senate seat previously held by Democrats and two in South Texas. won a congressional district. Sen. Ted Cruz, who won re-election with a majority of Latino voters, said the result represented a “generational shift.”
The Democratic Party saw a bright spot for itself. Eddie Morales Jr., the state representative for the vast border district that stretches from Eagle Pass to El Paso, continued to defend his seat Tuesday, narrowly winning two years after winning by a 12-point margin. Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo also won by an unexpectedly narrow margin of about 5 percentage points over a Republican challenger who significantly outspent his budget.
It’s too early to tell whether the Republican Party’s gains will be sustained or extend beyond President Trump himself, said Joshua Blank, director of research at the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. said. But Blank said Democrats would be wise to worry about the possibility that this shift will continue.
Trump’s success among Latino voters was due to the fact that in places like Texas, many Latinos “consider themselves multiracial,” where race and ethnicity come first. Blank said it seems to come from an understanding that he grew up in a community that was not about matters. President Trump targeted Hispanic men, who rarely vote, by appealing to their wallets, masculinity, and place in culture and society, but not directly to their identity as a racial or ethnic minority. There wasn’t.”
“So does that mean these voters will stay in the Republican column? I don’t know. Does that mean they’ll support someone not named Donald Trump? Not sure,” Blank said. Said. “But he changed the terms of the debate in a way that Democrats were uncomfortable with.”
Border counties move right toward Trump
Nine counties within 32 miles of the Texas-Mexico border flipped from supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 to supporting Republican Donald Trump in 2024.
Note: Unofficial results for 2024. Credit: Source: Texas Secretary of State. Chart: Dan Keemahill/ProPublica and Texas Tribune
As with other campaign appeals, Mr. Trump has criticized Ms. Harris for the economic challenges that many people – rightly or wrongly – blame on President Joe Biden. won the support of Latino voters.
Geronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said Trump’s immediate challenge will be to deliver on his promise to improve the economic fortunes of his voters. And he said voters will hold President Trump accountable if he doesn’t do so. Cortina pointed out that many Latinos supported President Bush’s reelection in 2004, but in 2008, amid the economic downturn, they left the Republican Party and supported Democrat Barack Obama.
“Restructuring happens when sustainable change occurs, but it’s not clear at this point whether that’s happening,” Cortina said.
He also said it was too early to tell whether President Trump’s appeals, let alone those of Republicans, were temporary. This is because Latinos still tend to favor Democrats in local elections.
One example is the race for sheriff in Val Verde County, nearly three hours west of San Antonio.
Although Trump won the county with 63% of the vote, Democrat Joe Frank Martinez retained his seat, defeating his Republican challenger with 57% of the vote.
Martinez said Project RedTX, a Republican-backed PAC, initially tried to get him to switch parties. When he refused, the PAC supported his opponent, who had campaigned around immigration, even though that was not the sheriff’s job.
This year, the group supported more than 50 local candidates, primarily in border counties. Although the three candidates it supported in Val Verde County lost, Wayne Hamilton, a veteran Republican operative who heads the group, said he was among the local candidates who won the election by supporting Trump, the county’s top vote-getter. He noted that several people also support him. One such case is Jim Wells County, where Trump won 57% of the vote and the Democratic sheriff was narrowly ousted by his Republican challenger.
Hamilton cited Trump for what Latino voters who live on or near the border see as a “breakdown in border security and a failure in the mission” of the Biden administration to stem the flow of migrants into Texas. He said they were flocking to the president.
Record numbers of arrivals overwhelmed border infrastructure in many communities. In Valverde, around 20,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, arrived almost simultaneously in 2021, forcing authorities to close the international port of entry while they figure out how to deal with the situation.
Hamilton said the public outcry was strongest in counties with higher poverty rates, where residents were more likely to feel their communities were “overcrowded by people who are poorer and have greater needs.” It is said to be expensive.
Hamilton celebrated President Trump’s 16-point lead over the Stars this year, up from a 60-point lead in 2016 to 76 points.
However, poll results showed that despite aggressive campaigning by Republicans, Democrats, including the incumbent sheriff, managed to hold on to their positions. “Every candidate who ran as a Democrat won, so Trump’s seat is basically an isolated seat,” said Starr County Democratic Party Chairwoman Jessica Vella.
Still, she said, if Democrats nationally and statewide want to keep their counties healthy, they need to work with local leaders to connect with voters.
Hamilton said some newly converted Trump voters may be less willing to vote against local Democratic leaders because they tend to be known in their communities, especially in small border counties. said.
“The further down the ballot you go, the more personal everything becomes,” Hamilton said. “He’s not the guy you see on TV, right? That’s the guy I go to mass with.”
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Local Democratic leaders, including Sylvia Bruni of Webb County, a longtime Democratic stronghold, said they had alerted state and national headquarters about Republican advances in the district. But she said there was little support and instead the group had to rely almost entirely on whatever funds it could raise on its own.
Bruni said this will not be enough in the future. “I need help.”
