The Reddening of the Hispanic Vote

The Reddening of the Hispanic Vote

by Jeff Blaylock

It was 1994. Seinfeld, the most popular show on TV, injected “No soup for you!” into popular culture. Boyz II Men had the No. 1 song, and Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause was No. 1 at the box office. As AOL was cheerfully announced we had mail, Zip Disks began freeing us from the tyranny of floppies. The Dallas Cowboys were Super Bowl champions.

That was the most recent time Texas voters elected Democrats to statewide offices. Since then, the last 167 candidates elected statewide in Texas have been Republicans, including the eight who won on Tuesday. The voters of every other state have elected at least one Democrat statewide since Texas last did it, including states much redder than Texas is today. 

Thirty years of losing … and counting. There have been a few “almosts” like John Sharp and Paul Hobby in 1998, the Barack Obama wave of 2008 and Beto O’Rourke six years ago. There was no “almost” about this year’s election. Tuesday’s results reinforced not only the gap between the two parties but also the rapid erosion of the Democratic brand among Hispanic and Latino voters.

Exit polling indicates Hispanic/Latino voters favored former President Trump over Vice President Harris, 55%-44%, but that was not the most surprising data point. More revelatory is realizing Hispanic/Latino men (64%-35%, +29%) voted for Trump at a rate much closer to White men (68%-29%, +39%) than Hispanic/Latino women (43%-55%, minus-12%). Trump’s campaign was especially aimed at men, and it appears that strategy has worked and continues to work. 

But we don’t need exit polling to reveal the increasing success of Republican candidates among Hispanic/Latino voters. We just need to look at the map.

The reddening of South and West Texas accelerated since Trump’s first election in 2016. Trump improved his performance in every one of these counties, many of them by more than 10 points – 14 of them by more than 20 points. His 52.5% in Cameron Co. is 20.5 percentage points higher than his 32.0% in 2016. In Hidalgo Co., Trump received 51.0% percent of the vote, up 23.0 points from 2016. In Webb Co., Trump won with 50.7% of the vote, up 28.1 points from his first run for president.

His vote share rose 39% in Starr Co., 38% in Maverick Co., 28% in Zapata, 25% in Jim Hogg Co., 22% in Zavala Co., 21% in Brooks and Willacy counties and almost 20% in Val Verde Co. Overall, he improved his performance among the dozen border counties by 20.9 percentage points over 2016, carrying all but two of them. In 2016, he won five of them.

Whatever advantage Democrats had historically relied upon in South Texas is largely gone. Clinton’s nearly 240,000 net vote advantage from border counties in 2016 has shrunk to just over 11,000 votes. Among all the counties shown on the map, a net margin of over 300,000 votes for Democrats has shrunk to fewer than 20,000 votes. 

We have not explored precinct-level data yet, but I suspect Trump gained support among Hispanics and Latinos in the urban and counties that have lately been Democratic strongholds. In 2020, President Biden received more than 923,000 net votes in Dallas, Harris, Travis and Bexar counties combined. Trump cut that margin to around 567,000 net votes this year, a shift of more than 350,000 votes. 

Put together, these are staggering losses of net votes coming from the only areas Democrats have performed well in recent elections. The rest of the state is a rural red wall.

Trump’s margin in counties with fewer than 20,000 registered voters almost completely offset Harris’s advantage in counties with at least 500,000 registered voters. The counties in between are solidly red. Harris won exactly one county with between 20,000 and 500,000 registered voters: Hays. 

Trump received at least 80% of the vote in 129 of the state’s 254 counties. Harris had single-digit support in two dozen counties. Trump’s worst performance was 29.4% in Travis Co. Harris cleared that figure in just over 50 counties. Trump’s advantage in counties with fewer than 50,000 registered voters exceeded 900,000 net votes. Add the counties with between 50,000 and 100,000 registered voters, and the Republican’s advantage rose to 1.3 million votes. As of this writing, that’s more than the total number of votes cast for any candidate in at least 20 different states.

We have focused this analysis on the presidential race. Keep in mind that Trump slightly under-performed other Republican statewide candidates, as he has in every election. The statewide judicial candidates averaged 58%, a little over a point and a half above Trump.

There are only three methods to increase a political party’s share of the vote: convert existing voters from the other party, win crossover votes for specific candidates and attract new voters. Republicans have the edge in the first method as evidenced by the map above. Crossover voting has become increasingly rare, at least at the statewide level. Roughly 1 out of every 55 voters selected Allred and otherwise mostly if not entirely Republican candidates. This is not surprising. It’s been six years since single-punch, straight-party voting was an option, but its popularity had grown until it was being used by seven out of every 10 voters.

That leaves new voters, a group that historically votes at much lower rates than recent voters. New voters fall into four basic buckets: Texans who haven’t registered to vote, Texans who are registered but haven’t voted, new Texans who recently moved into the state and young adult Texans turning 18. 

Starting with the last group, voters under age 24 favored Trump, 54%-43%, according to exit polling. At least for now, that option is not particularly great for Democrats.

The potential impact of the other three groups is harder to tease out, largely because many more of them don’t vote than do. Those that have voted left behind some breadcrumbs. According to the exit poll, the 9% of voters who answered yes to “Is this the first year you have ever voted?” went to Trump, 80%-19%. According to Derek Ryan’s analysis of primary voting, around 30,000 voters with “no voting history” cast ballots early in this year’s Republican primary compared to around 18,000 in the Democratic primary. So new voters seem to be more in the Republican column, on balance, at least for now. 

That leaves non-voters, and there are a lot of them. More than 7 million registered voters did not cast a ballot in this year’s presidential election. Another 1.5 million or so Texans who are eligible to vote were not registered in time to vote in last week’s election. 

Sadly, neither of these figures is new or unusual. At least 5 million registered voters did not vote in each even-year general election since 1998. At least 1.5 million eligible Texans were not registered to vote in each even-year general election since 2010 (In other words, since the Obama blue wave of 2008). 

Getting non-voters to the polls has historically been quite a challenge. Frequent voters tend to vote. Non-voters tend not to vote. #analysis

Going into the 2020 election, there were almost 5 million Texans who had voted in at least one of the last four general election but no primary elections, according to Derek Ryan. More than 2 million of them didn’t vote in 2020. There were even more registered voters with no recent voting history whatsoever (This would include newly registered voters.). More than 4 million of them didn’t vote in 2020.

Coming into 2024, these two groups of sporadic voters and non-voting registrants accounted for more around two thirds of Texans registered to vote in last week’s election. We do not have final figures on their participation, but it is unlikely to be very different from most past years. In other words, much lower than frequent voters.

If, on balance, new voters are trending Republican, converted voters are turning Republican, non-voters are hard to motivate, and everyone else was already favoring Republicans, then there is very little fertile ground left aside from unregistered but eligible Texans, a group that is surely unlikely to vote in huge enough numbers even if they were registered.

That’s not to say it is impossible. In 2026, Democratic candidates will be running against the Trump White House rather than away from Biden. For Democratic candidates, 2018 was undoubtedly a better year than 2016. It wasn’t enough, but it was better. No one truly knows what the economy will be like in two years or how world events may shape voters’ opinions. No one can predict if voters might sour on Republicans’ more conservative agenda sure to be enacted this session. Inspirational candidates may arise.

The road, already long traveled, remains long and difficult. With a broken brand and a lack of avenues to win over voters, Democrats are poised to continue their statewide losing streak.

Jeff Blaylock is the founder of TXElects Legacy & Senior Editor of TXLege News. You can follow Jeff on X and LinkedIn.

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