Latino voters flocked to Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Texas in droves, reversing a long-running erosion for the party ahead of this year’s pivotal midterms.
The numbers were dramatic: In five different rural majority-Latino counties, more votes were cast in Tuesday’s Democratic primary than for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
“These very Hispanic counties are amongst the swingiest in the country, and they’re really telling us something,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump GOP strategist who wrote a book about Latino voters.
The results provide some much-needed hope for Democrats that they can compete not only in Texas as they have long dreamed, but in Latino districts across the country that could determine control of the House in November. Few groups of voters have vexed Democrats in recent cycles as much as Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley.
On Tuesday, the party started to seem like it had a way back.
The turnout surge among Hispanic and Latino voters helped power state Rep. James Talarico’s Senate primary victory over Rep. Jasmine Crockett, setting him up for a general election that has ignited Democrats’ fever dream of finally flipping Texas. In counties that are majority-Latino, Talarico won by roughly 22 points, according to preliminary results, compared to a roughly 3-point margin of victory over Crockett in the rest of the state.
It’s the latest sign that Latino voters who helped President Donald Trump return to the White House are not inherently sticking with Republicans. Democratic candidates put up strong numbers in predominantly Latino areas in gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey last November, as well as a smattering of special elections, including a state senate race in Fort Worth just last month.
But the results are especially significant because South Texas had long been an early warning sign of Democrats’ problems with Latino voters. While Latino voters swung sharply towards Trump in 2024, the party had been losing ground in the Rio Grande Valley dating back several election cycles.
A number of Rio Grande valley counties swung away from Democrats in 2020, and kept swinging right in 2024: In Zapata County, for instance, where 94 percent of the population is Hispanic, Trump won just 33 percent of the vote in 2016, but took 53 percent in 2020 and 61 percent in 2024.
On Tuesday, it was among the five counties where more voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary than voted for Harris in 2024, along with Kenedy, Jim Hogg, Reeves and Dimmit. Talarico won 55 percent of the vote across those five counties.
Republicans leaned heavily into their recent gains with Latinos as they redrew congressional maps in their favor last year, with several majority-Latino districts among those they are hoping to flip.
But some of those flips now look a lot less certain. In the newly redrawn 35th Congressional District, which stretches from San Antonio to Austin and is majority Latino, Democrats’ four-way primary drew 7,500 more voters than Republicans’ three-way contest. Both primaries are headed to a runoff in the district that Trump won by 10 points in 2024.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), whose district was also redrawn to be more friendly for Republicans and who faces a tough election in November even after he was pardoned by Trump in December, said Tuesday’s results were evidence that Republicans’ gains in Texas in 2024 were “not a political realignment.”
Latino voters are angry with Republicans, he said, over continued high prices and Trump’s tariffs, along with ongoing immigration enforcement that has gone beyond what voters are comfortable with.
“If ICE would have just stuck on deporting criminals, people would have been OK with that, they would have been supportive,” Cuellar said. “But the moment they started going into work sites and going after criminal records — down here in South Texas, everybody knows somebody who has been here for a while — so that has turned Hispanics against Republicans.”
Madrid, the GOP strategist, argues Latino voters have always been more of a swing group than many people recognized. With Trump in office and high prices persisting, that creates openings for Democrats, both in Texas and across the country.
“It began literally, with Liberation Day, with the tariffs,” said Madrid, the GOP strategist. “When Trump announced those, you could see Trump’s numbers dropping with Latinos precipitously.”
Democrats’ best-case scenario in Texas would mean Cuellar and Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) both hold their districts despite the effects of redistricting, with the party flipping the nearby 15th District, where Tejano singer Bobby Pulido won a primary to face Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, as well as the open 35th district. In that case, Republicans’ might pick up only one seat in the state despite their aggressive gerrymander.
And while national Democrats have not identified Texas as necessary to take back the Senate, there is still hope that Talarico could become the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas in more than three decades.
Talarico’s performance with Latino voters was notable not only because of his party’s recent struggles, but also because the last Democrat to come close in a Senate race in Texas — Beto O’Rourke in 2018 — faltered with Latino voters. O’Rourke lost dozens of predominantly Latino counties in the primary, and comparatively lower turnout among Latino voters in the general election hurt his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, which he lost by less than three points. O’Rourke’s struggles in the region presaged what was to come for Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley.
Talarico has campaigned hard in the region.
“Talarico’s faith-based messaging probably resonated really well, especially in a community that is heavily driven by faith,” said Kendall Scudder, chair of the Texas Democratic Party.
Scudder described Tuesday’s result as a “good first step” in retreading inroads with the community ahead of November, but said the party had to “double down” on their efforts to engage. But local Democrats, scarred by recent elections, aren’t taking a victory lap.
“It’s not the party that’s driving people to the polls. It’s the horrendous behaviors of the man in the White House and his cronies. That’s what’s driving people to the polls,” said Sylvia Bruni, chair of South Texas’ Webb County Democratic Party.
Democrats, she acknowledged, have a “prime opportunity” to win back the community against a “backdrop of abuse that our people are experiencing full force.” But she said the party still hasn’t done enough to directly engage with voters in remote, expansive counties like hers, which includes Laredo.
“I’d be the first to say to my party, you would need to do a hell of a lot more for us,” she said.
How much ground Democrats can make up in Texas may also depend on who they are facing. In the Republican primary, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) did a few points better in Latino areas than he did in the rest of the state, suggesting he might be the stronger general election candidate with Latino voters if he can survive a runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. He’s run well in Latino areas of the state in the past.
“John Cornyn has been the senator for quite a while, and there’s a familiarity with South Texans,” said Daniel Garza, a Texas-based Republican strategist and president of the conservative Libre Initiative. “He’s like somebody who’s trusted, who has a lot of credibility, and who’s familiar, right? And so people are comfortable with him in that position. Paxton, not so much.”
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