I think many were surprised on Tuesday by how well the Democrats did in Texas. It was a bloodbath, not just losing the Senate, but losing the governorship and other seats as well.
People have just been so used to it being a red wall that they couldn't conceive that Texas would go blue and vote for a guy like Democrat James Talarico, with all the various red flags he was showing.
If you dive into the numbers, it gets more concerning.
People did turn out for Ken Paxton, at least in midterm numbers. He got 4.2 million votes. That's the same amount that Sen. Ted Cruz got in the 2018 midterm against Beto O'Rourke. Beto got 4 million and lost.
But the problem here was that Talarico got 5.4 million votes. To understand how troubling that is, let's look back to 2024, when Collin Allred ran against Cruz. That's a presidential turnout year. Allred got 5 million.
So Talarico turned out more than Allred or Beto. He beat the last presidential-year numbers by 400,000 votes — in a midterm year. So he was able to get presidential-year numbers while the Republican numbers stayed flat, similar to the prior midterm numbers. The final percentage was 55 percent to 43 percent, enabling a Democrat to gain the Senate for the first time in 33 years in Texas. He got 4.4 million in early voting. So he already had more in early voting than Paxton got in total.
That's concerning.
So assuming those numbers are real, that may mean a few things.
First, the "weird" attacks on Talarico don't appear to have worked and/or people fell for his nice-boy, moderate act. We can't assume that everyone knows all the negatives about him; X is not real life. And virtually all the ads I was seeing were positive Talarico ads and negative Paxton ads. Naturally, the media was pitching all positive about Talarico and negative about Paxton.
Then, does that mean that's increased Democrat numbers or unhappy Republicans crossing over to vote for him? It may have been both. Paxton won most of the counties in the state, but Talarico took the big population centers and ran up the numbers there, with big leads over Paxton. He also got some areas that have leaned red in the past.
Talarico carried Collin County, home to more than 1.1 million residents, by 12.1 percentage points and won neighboring Denton County, with a population of roughly 1 million, by 8.4 points.
Democratic gains extended beyond North Texas. Talarico won Fort Bend County outside Houston by 28.6 points and captured Brazoria County, a long-Republican county south of Houston, by 5.4 points.
Meanwhile, Paxton dominated in the rural counties, winning dozens of counties by margins exceeding 40 and 50 percentage points.
Talarico won 13 districts in which House Republicans also won, which would indicate people splitting tickets.
Talarico ended up turning out more voters than any Democrat Senate candidate in recent memory, which is disturbing when you consider how extreme he is.
However, there is perhaps a saving grace number here, assuming it holds into the future.
Republicans have turned out 5.9 million in the past in presidential years. That's what Ted Cruz got in 2024, for example. So that's still 500,000 more than the Democrats got this year.
Also, Donald Trump got 6.3 million votes. Kamala Harris received 4.8 million.
So if we're talking about 2028, a presidential year, if those 2024 presidential numbers hold for Republicans, that may still bring the state back into the Republican column (for president) in 2028. The greater number is amenable to Republicans. If anyone defected because of concerns over Paxton but is essentially Republican, Republicans may still hold them/pull them back for 2028.
So while it was an ugly day, and we're going to have to deal with Talarico plus the other consequences of losing Texas, I think the voters willing to vote red are still there. There's an avenue back by reaching out to the voters and having a strong presidential candidate. Whatever else may be going on, it's always about the economy and what the voters think about that. You have to make sure that they know all the good things you are doing, and how the Democrats only make things worse. There's a reason that Republicans have held sway in Texas with achievement for all these years. And voters are about to find out very quickly how awful the Democrats are.
