Donald Trump's Texas Triumph Presents Doomsday Scenario for Democrats

Donald Trump’s decisive victory in Texas during the November 5 presidential election further solidified the state’s Republican dominance, according to Thomas Gift, director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London. In a statement to *Newsweek*, Gift asserted that liberal hopes of a competitive Texas, driven by changing demographics, were proven unfounded.

Trump secured 56.2 percent of the vote, outperforming Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, who garnered 42.4 percent. This marked an improvement over Trump’s 2020 performance, where he won by 5.6 points, and his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, when he won by 9 points. Despite early predictions from YouGov’s Cooperative Election Study, which suggested a tight race with Trump only 4 points ahead, the results demonstrated Texas remained firmly in Republican hands.

Liberal expectations that the state's growing Latino population would swing the vote in favor of Democrats were also disproven. A CNN exit poll of 2,893 Texas voters showed that 55 percent of Latinos voted for Trump, while 44 percent supported Harris. Trump also led among Asian voters with 58 percent compared to Harris’s 40 percent. The only demographic where Harris secured strong support was among Black voters, who favored her by 84 percent compared to Trump’s 13 percent.

Trump’s performance across Texas’s 254 counties also saw improvement, with the exception of just 17 counties. Remarkably, he increased his support in 14 out of the 18 counties closest to the Mexican border, a region with a Latino majority, doubling his 2020 numbers.

Gift remarked, “Texas has long been known as the state where Democratic money goes to die,” reaffirming that the state's political landscape remains steadfastly Republican.

In addition to Trump’s victory, incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz won re-election by 8.6 points, securing 53.1 percent of the vote against Democrat Colin Allred, who received 44.5 percent. This marked a significant increase over Cruz’s slim 2.6-point victory over Allred in 2018. Despite a strong fundraising effort from Allred’s campaign, which raised $30.3 million in the third quarter of 2024 compared to Cruz’s $21 million, Democrats failed to flip the seat.

With the loss of control in the Senate, Democrats now hold 47 seats, including those of independents who caucus with them, while Republicans maintain 53 seats.