DALLAS — Texas is redder now than it has been in years after voters gave decisive wins for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in this state.
For full election results, click here.
Here are the three biggest takeaways:
TAKEAWAY 1:
The big blue wall has fallen in the Rio Grande Valley. Donald Trump successfully flipped this Democratic stronghold in South Texas, including places like Cameron County (Brownsville) all the way up to Webb County (Laredo), which turned red for the first time in 100 years. Blue is evaporating on the Texas map when it comes to presidential races and it wasn’t by chance. Republicans have made investments in the Rio Grande Valley for several years now with candidates and infrastructure. Tuesday night, it paid off. Texas Democrats retain urban counties like Dallas, Harris, Travis, Bexar and El Paso. But Republicans are needling there, as well, especially in Dallas.
TAKEAWAY 2:
Donald Trump won more than half of the Latino vote in Texas, the first president to do so since George W. Bush a quarter of a century ago. Latinos have traditionally voted Democratic but they have always been social conservatives. Colin Allred and Kamala Harris, who both campaigned against this state’s tight abortion restrictions, likely pushed away some of those voters.
Donald Trump also got 400,000 more votes in Texas than Ted Cruz. That means Republican voters here skipped the U.S. Senate race or voted for Democrat Colin Allred. It’s an image problem for Cruz, but it didn’t matter this cycle. Polls showed the Cruz-Allred race was within the margin of error. But Cruz ended up with almost a 10-point lead in the end. That is a stunning result because Cruz has never reached that threshold before in his previous two races for U.S. Senate. In 2018, Cruz won by 2.6% of the vote. That’s why Democrats thought he was vulnerable this go around. One interesting note, on Tuesday night, when Sen. Cruz gave his acceptance speech, his campaign told me that Cruz was wearing his lucky tie – the same one he wore at the U.S. Senate Debate last month in the WFAA studios.
TAKEAWAY 3:
Build. Back. Better. To borrow a line from President Biden, that’s the only thing Texas Democrats can now do after getting trounced on Tuesday. But where do they start? Texas Democrats have often focused on congressional races. They have a lot of work to do in suburban and rural counties across the state where the party does not even have a presence.
Texas Democrats, a scrappy political party for 30+ years since the days of Ann Richards, are shellshocked this week. They need a message, a brand and a candidate. All three take time to build. Texas Democrats (and national Dems) ran for the last eight years on defeating Donald Trump. Voters showed last night they are not interested in that. The state’s strict abortion law that Colin Allred and Kamala Harris campaigned against also did not resonate with Texas women like Democrats calculated.
Yes, there were a few Democratic ‘bright spots,’ if you can call them that. Allred appears to have won in Tarrant County with a razor-thin lead after Kamala Harris lost it. Incumbent U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar, under federal indictment, also won re-election
Gilberto Hinojosa, the longtime chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said on Friday that he would not seek re-election next spring. In an interview for Sunday’s Inside Texas Politics on WFAA, Hinojosa did not take blame for his party’s defeat in Texas but instead faulted the national party for not helping Texas Democrats counter the billionaires that Republicans have here.
