Democrats’ struggles in Texas certainly aren’t new: No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994. There was hope that would change in 2020, two years after El Paso’s favorite son, Beto O’Rourke, came within sniffing distance of ousting Cruz and Democrats picked up two congressional seats and a dozen state House seats, bringing the minority party to a level it hadn’t seen in a decade. But if we can learn anything about Texas politics from the last election cycle, it’s that a small leftward lurch spurred by a fast-growing and diversifying population doesn’t necessarily equate to substantial Democratic gains. Last year, for instance, Texas Democrats flipped only one state House seat, but that gain was offset by a Republican candidate who narrowly beat his Democratic successor to reclaim his Houston-area seat. At the congressional level, Democrats didn’t pick up a single district.
Plus, since Cruz, who is widely disliked, is not up for reelection anytime soon, and former President Donald Trump is no longer on the ballot, there’s a shrinking list of vulnerable Texas Republicans. What’s left in terms of electoral gains for Democrats, then, are overwhelmingly red swaths of the state, where it will be harder to make inroads, especially given that border-area regions that typically lean Democratic are now in play, too. According to an analysis of the November election results by The New York Times, several counties along the Texas border shifted decisively toward Trump. In Starr County, for example, President Joe Biden bested Trump by only 5 percentage points; Hillary Clinton had won the same county by over 60 points in 2016. Other heavily Hispanic counties, like Maverick, Hidalgo and Cameron, also swung in Republicans’ favor — signaling that Biden and Democrats might have a real problem with Hispanic voters.
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