In a historic "blue tsunami," Texas Democrats took the state's top seats, upsetting longtime Republican incumbents like Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, disrupting the stronghold the GOP has had on the state's government for decades all the way down the ballot.
So, what happened?
Economic pain exacerbated by President Donald Trump's tariffs and the war in Iran was likely the biggest factor that led more people to vote Democratic in these midterms, political consultants and strategists from both parties told The Texas Newsroom. The Trump administration's mass deportations and a general numbness to culture war issues that used to reliably rile up voters also lost Republican support among Latino voters and lifelong conservatives who may be disillusioned with the party.
"This is just a complete repudiation of the party as it's been run nationally and at the state level," said Garrett Fulce, a Republican political consultant.
What the numbers show
Major voting swings among Latino, suburban and rural voters in Texas powered Democratic wins, Fulce said.
Along with the economy, Trump's crackdown on immigration enforcement likely flipped the switch for many Hispanic voters. Hundreds of thousands of people have been deported since the beginning of Trump's second term, most of whom are Hispanic or Latino and, according to a recent study, do not have criminal histories.
Fulce estimated that based on early election results data, there was around a 50-point swing among Hispanic voters in voting red to blue from 2024 to now.
That swing was most noticeable in border counties like Starr County, which flipped red for the first time in a century to elect Trump in 2024 and now overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, according to unofficial election results.
"It reverted back to Clinton levels of Democrat support along the border," Fulce said. "So, it lost all of the gains Republicans have made in it over the past 10 years."
But it wasn't just voters in predominantly Latino border counties who made the switch. Suburban voters — like those in Williamson, Tarrant and Collin counties — did too, voting for Talarico and other Democrats down the ballot when they've leaned Republican in the past.
Economic struggles likely motivated their votes too, said Austin-based Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser.
"I think that was a big part of the explanation for why the Democrats won, in addition to just boosting their turnout in cities and getting their voters to the polls," Steinhauser said, "while Republicans were not as motivated and probably didn't show up in the numbers that they needed to win as usual."
Redistricting may have backfired
Republicans also saw losses in congressional districts and county precincts specifically gerrymandered last year to benefit the GOP in an unusual mid-decade redistricting push.
In North Texas, Democratic commissioner Alisa Simmons defeated incumbent Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare in his reelection bid. That's despite the fact that a redrawn county precinct map gave GOP county commissioners the power on the court.
In Texas' Houston-area 9th Congressional District, Democrat Leticia Gutierrez defeated Republican Alex Mealer in a previously a Democratic-leaning district that Republicans redrew last year.
And a similar upset played out in the southwest Texas 23rd Congressional District, where Democrat Katy Padilla Stout won the seat over Republican candidate Brandon Herrera. The seat had been held by the GOP for over a decade, and Trump won the district by 15 points in 2024, according to a release from Padilla Stout's campaign.
Padilla Stout attributed the flip to voter concerns about affordability.
"The people of TX-23 made their voices loud and clear tonight," Padilla Stout said in a statement after her win. "They cannot afford Trump's policies any longer. They are tired of being told by Trump and his billionaire friends that there is no money for their healthcare, their schools, or their communities while billionaires keep getting handouts and bombs keep getting dropped on far-off lands."
Mealer also had a six-point lead in the polls leading up to the election and had outraised Gutierrez by more than a million dollars, Houston Public Media reported.
Jim Wick, a Democratic political consultant in Austin, said the success of GOP redistricting last year relied precariously on the hope that Latino Texans who voted Republican in 2024 because of the economy would continue voting Republican during these midterms.
"Because in Trump's first term, the economy was pretty good," Wick said. "Voters voting from an economic standpoint wanted to return to that, and that's not what they got. Instead, the economy got worse."
Other crucial issues
Low turnout and flipped votes among rural Republican voters also hurt the Texas GOP's chances, the political strategists said. In addition to the economy, hot-button issues like data centers and school vouchers likely weighed on those in the lead up to the midterms.
Abbott's push for a school voucher system that gives public dollars to families to use for private or homeschool education frustrated some rural legislators and their constituents at the time because of the key role public schools play in local rural economies.
The boom of data center construction across the state triggered concerns about how much water would be used to power those operations, the stress they could put on the state's electrical grid and the noise and general disruption to rural communities they could bring.
"Niche issues can play a big impact at the margin," said Steinhauser, the Republican strategist. "And in this case, I think what actually might've happened is that it kind of depressed Republican turnout in some of those areas where they really needed to do well to counteract what was going on in the cities and the suburbs."
And while culture war issues like LGBTQ+ rights remained important for some GOP voters, Democratic consultant Wick said election results show Republicans' focus on those issues didn't win people over the same way they did in the 2020 election and during the Biden administration.
"Texas voters have a lot bigger concerns than those issues, those culture war issues. Costs are going up, resources are at stake, public schools are at stake," Wick said. "Republicans had no record to run on. They've been in power for 30 years and things aren't getting better in the state. And so, they just tried to use the old saw and voters didn't buy it."
Additional reporting by Houston Public Media's Bianca Seward and KERA's James Hartley.
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