Texas is big. It’s loud. And every four years, pundits start talking about it "turning blue" like it’s some kind of inevitable destiny. Honestly, if you were watching the news leading up to the 2024 United States presidential election Texas results, you probably heard the same old song. People pointed at the exploding populations in Austin and Dallas and figured the GOP’s days were numbered.
They were wrong. Way wrong.
Actually, Donald Trump didn't just win Texas; he crushed it. He walked away with a 13.7% margin over Kamala Harris. To put that in perspective, that's more than double his 5.6% lead from 2020. While the "Blexit" and "Blue Texas" crowd was busy looking at suburban sprawl, a massive, historic shift was happening right under their noses in places nobody expected.
The South Texas Shockwave
If you want to understand what really happened with the 2024 United States presidential election Texas vote, you have to look at the border. For over a century, South Texas was a Democratic fortress. We're talking about places where being a Republican was basically unheard of for generations.
Then came Starr County.
Starr County is about 97% Hispanic. It hadn't voted for a Republican president since Benjamin Harrison was in office in 1892. In 2024, Trump flipped it. He didn't just squeak by, either. He won it outright. He also took Maverick County, which saw a mind-blowing 28% swing to the right.
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Why? It wasn't just one thing. Experts like Jeronimo Cortina from the University of Houston pointed out that many Latino voters felt the Biden-Harris administration had basically checked out on the economy and border security. People living in Eagle Pass or McAllen see the border every day; it's not a talking point for them, it's their backyard. Trump’s message on "masculinity" and "pocketbook issues" resonated way more than the identity politics the Democrats were pushing.
The Suburban "Flipping" Myth
For years, the narrative was that the "Texas Triangle"—Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin—would eventually overwhelm the rural red vote. And for a while, it looked like that might be true. Biden did well in the suburbs in 2020.
But 2024 saw a massive "snap back."
- Tarrant County (Fort Worth): This is always the big one to watch. It’s often called the most conservative large county in the country, but it went for Biden in 2020. In 2024? Trump took it back.
- Williamson and Hays Counties: These areas outside Austin have been trending blue, but the margins for Harris were nowhere near what she needed to offset the rest of the state.
- Harris County (Houston): Harris still won here, but Trump closed the gap significantly. He came within about 5 points of winning the most populous county in Texas. In 2020, he lost it by 13.
Basically, the "suburban revolt" against Trump never materialized. If anything, the suburbs decided that inflation and the cost of gas were more important than the "threat to democracy" rhetoric coming from the Harris campaign.
Turnout: The Dog That Didn't Bark
You’d think with 18.6 million registered voters—a record for Texas—we would have seen a massive wave at the polls. Kinda the opposite happened.
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Overall turnout actually dropped to about 61%, down from nearly 67% in 2020. This really hurt the Democrats. Their strategy relies on high-energy, high-turnout surges in urban centers. When 11.3 million people show up instead of the 12 or 13 million they were hoping for, the math just stops working for them.
Interestingly, the Republican primary back in March 2024 already hinted at this. Over 2.3 million Republicans showed up to vote for Trump (and a dwindling Nikki Haley), while only about 975,000 Democrats bothered to cast a primary ballot. The enthusiasm gap was a canyon.
What People Get Wrong About the Latino Vote
There’s this lazy idea that "Latino" is a monolith. The 2024 United States presidential election Texas data proved that's total nonsense.
Exit polls showed Trump winning about 55% of the Latino vote statewide. That is a gargantuan shift. Even George W. Bush, who was a popular Texas governor with deep ties to the community, didn't hit those kinds of numbers.
The shift was especially sharp among Latino men. They weren't voting based on ethnic identity; they were voting as construction workers, oil field techs, and small business owners. They felt the sting of $4-a-gallon gas and expensive groceries just like everyone else. When Trump talked about "drill, baby, drill," he was talking directly to the economy of the Permian Basin and the Gulf Coast.
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Is Texas Still a Swing State?
Honestly? Probably not for a while.
The 2024 results suggest that 2018 and 2020 might have been the outliers, not the start of a new trend. With Ted Cruz also fending off a well-funded challenge from Colin Allred in the Senate race—winning by about 8 points—the Republican grip on the state seems firmer than it’s been in a decade.
The Democrats spent millions. They had the "Allred for Senate" signs everywhere in Dallas and Houston. They had the celebrity endorsements. And yet, they lost ground in almost every demographic. If the GOP continues to win over half of the Hispanic vote, there is no mathematical path for a Democrat to win Texas in the foreseeable future.
Practical Takeaways for the Future
If you're looking at the political landscape moving toward the 2026 midterms and beyond, keep these things in mind:
- Watch the Border, Not Just the Burbs: The Rio Grande Valley is now the most competitive region in the state. What happens in McAllen and Brownsville matters as much as what happens in Plano.
- Economic Messaging Wins: Culture wars get the headlines, but in Texas, the "Price of Milk" index decided the 2024 election.
- The Rural Firewall is Real: Trump’s margins in rural counties remain at 80% or 90%, which is nearly impossible for any urban surge to overcome.
Moving forward, the best thing you can do to stay informed is to follow local county-level data rather than statewide polls. Groups like the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin provide the most granular looks at how these shifts are happening in real-time. If you're a voter or an organizer, focus on registration in the fast-growing "collar" counties—Denton, Collin, and Montgomery—as these are the new battlegrounds that will define the next decade of Texas politics.