Donald Trump’s resounding presidential election victory in Texas on November 5 “reaffirmed that the Lone Star State remains solidly in Republican control,” according to a prominent political scientist.
The comment was made to Newsweek by Thomas Gift, director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, who added that liberal hopes that “shifting demographics” could make Texas competitive were shown to be misplaced.
Trump won Texas convincingly with 56.2 percent of the vote, 13.8 percentage points ahead of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris who secured 42.4 percent. Notably this was an improvement on 2020, when Trump beat Joe Biden in Texas by 5.6 points, and 2016 when he bested Hillary Clinton by 9 points.
This victory was achieved despite YouGov’s Cooperative Election Study concluding Trump was just 4 points ahead in Texas, which would have been the tightest result since 1992, in October. In an interview with MSNBC earlier this year, former Texas Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who narrowly lost the 2018 Texas Senate election to Ted Cruz, described Texas as “really the sleeper battleground state.”
Crucially predictions that Texas’ growing Latino population would make the state competitive for Democrats were disproven. A CNN exit poll of 2,893 Texan voters published on polling day found 55 percent of Latinos who voted cast ballots for Trump, versus just 44 percent for Harris. Trump also led Harris by 58 percent to 40 percent with Asian voters. Only Black voters were reliably on the Democratic candidate’s side, with 84 percent backing Harris compared to 13 percent for Trump.
Out of Texas’s 254 counties Trump performed better on November 5 than in the 2020 presidential election in all but 17 counties. The exceptions were Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Waller, Gray, Mills, Wheeler, Shackelford, Baylor, Crockett, Jeff Davis, Armstrong, Edwards, Roberts, Kent, Borden and Loving counties.
Trump won 14 out of the 18 counties situated within 20 miles of the Mexican border, a Latino-majority area, double the number he achieved in 2020.
Photo Illustration by Newsweek/Getty Images
Speaking to Newsweek, Gift said: “Texas has long been know as the state where Democratic money goes to die. For liberals hoping that shifting demographics might change that outcome, this election has reaffirmed that the Lone Star State remains solidly in Republican control.”
Newsweek contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment via email.
November 5 also saw incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz convincingly secure re-election, fighting off a challenge from Democrat Colin Allred, who currently sits in the House of Representatives.
According to the Associated Press, Cruz won by 8.6 points with 53.1 percent of the vote against 44.5 percent for Allred. By contrast, in 2018 Cruz only achieved victory over Allred by 2.6 points, with 50.9 percent of the vote to 48.3 percent.
Ahead of the election, some Democrats believed they had a shot at flipping Cruz’s seat, with polling giving the Republican a lead of 1-7 percentage points.
In the third quarter of 2024, Allred’s campaign raised $30.3 million, substantially ahead of Cruz, who received $21 million across three accounts.
The Democrats lost control of the Senate on November 5, which left them with 47 senators, including those who affiliate with the party but aren’t members, compared with 53 Republicans.
