In the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Republican President Donald Trump was defeated for re-election by Democrat challenger Joe Biden. In the 2024 election, Trump ran for re-election again, defeating Democrat Kamala Harris. Trump won Texas in both 2020 and 2024. This article compares Trump and the Republican party's performance in Texas in these two elections.

The Nationwide Popular Vote, 2020 and 2024

Before looking at the way Texas voted, it is useful to first take a look at the national context. The nationwide popular votes in 2020 and 2024 were as follows:

As the above table shows, overall voter turnout was lower compared to 2020 by about 7 million votes. To put that in perspective, however, the turnout in 2020 was an all-time record high. Although voter turnout dropped in 2024, that election had the second-highest turnout in U.S. electoral history, exceeding the 2016 election by 16 million votes. And, even though turnout in 2024 was lower by 7 million votes, Trump received 1.6 million more votes than in 2020. These results suggest that not only did fewer people come out to vote for the Democrat in 2020, but also that many 2020 Biden voters switched to Trump in 2024.

Table 1 also shows that both the number and the percentage of votes for third-party, independent, and write-in candidates was essentially the same in 2024 as in 2020. Neither Trump nor Harris seems to have benefitted from any significant shift in this category, because there was none.

The Vote in Texas, 2020 and 2024

Table 2, below, shows the 2020 and 2024 presidential election results in Texas:

Table 2 shows that voter turnout in Texas in 2024 was practically unchanged from 2020. Another way of putting it is that Texas maintained the record-setting turnout level that it set in 2020, whereas the rest of the country did not. Other than that, the changes between 2020 and 2024 in Texas are not much different from the nationwide changes. Specifically, Trump received significantly more votes, the Democrat received significantly fewer, and the "other" vote hardly changed at all. Whether Trump's better performance in 2024 can be attributed to higher Republican turnout and lower Democrat turnout, versus 2020 Democrat voters switching to Trump in 2024, is not apparent from Table 2.

Table 2 also shows that Trump outperformed in Texas compared to his national performance in both elections. In 2020, he outperformed in Texas by 5.3 percent. In 2024, he outperformed by 6.2 percent. This is not surprising; Texas has been a reliably Republican state in U.S. presidential elections since 1980, and the Republican candidate always performs better in Texas than in the country as a whole.

The Republican margin of victory in Texas was 13.8 percent. This is a surge compared to the 2020 election, when Trump's margin of victory over Biden was only 5.8 percent, and it puts to rest any speculation that Texas is on the verge of "turning purple," or becoming a state where the two major parties are competitive statewide.

Breaking Down the Texas Vote

A better understanding of the Texas vote is obtained by breaking the electorate down into groups. Our first group is the state's ten most populous counties: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis, Collin, Denton, Hidalgo, El Paso, and Fort Bend. These ten counties are in the metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, McAllen, and El Paso. Our next group consists of the Texas counties having the highest percentage of Hispanic population. All of these counties are on or near the Rio Grande in south or west Texas. Excluding El Paso and Hidalgo Counties, which are in the first group, they are Hudspeth, Culberson, Presidio, Reeves, Pecos, Val Verde, Maverick, Zavala, Dimmit, Webb, Zapata, Frio, La Salle, Starr, Jim Hogg, Duval, Brooks, Jim Wells, Kleberg, Kenedy, Willacy, and Cameron—22 counties in all. Our third group consists of the remaining 222 Texas counties—the suburban and rural Anglo-majority counties of the panhandle, north Texas, west Texas, central Texas, east Texas, and the Gulf coast. Tables 3 and 4 show the breakdown of the 2020 and 2024 Texas vote according to these three groups.

Note that across the board, Trump did better in Texas in 2024 than in 2020. The ten most popular counties still voted Democrat as a whole, but at only a 7.0 percent margin in 2024, compared to a 15.8 percent margin in 2020. Furthermore, within this group, only Denton and Collin Counties voted for Trump in 2020, whereas Tarrant and Hidalgo Counties joined them in voting for Trump in 2024.

The most significant electoral shift in Texas in the 2024 election came in the 22 Hispanic-majority counties along the Rio Grande. Traditionally, Hispanics in Texas used to vote solidly Democratic. This tendency was reflected in the 2012 election, when Democrat Barak Obama's margin over Republican Mitt Romney in this group of 22 counties was 37.9 percent, as well as in 2016, when Democrat Hillary Clinton's margin of victory in this group was 34.9 percent. In 2016, all 15 of Texas' most Democrat counties were Hispanic counties along the Rio Grande: 13 in this group, plus El Paso and Hidalgo Counties in the urban group. The Republican party made great headway in 2020, when Trump won nine of the 22 counties, and lost the group as a whole by a 10.2 percent margin—still a loss, but almost a 25-percent gain from the previous election cycle. In 2024, Trump won seventeen of them, and he won the group as a whole by an 8.5 percent margin. Now, the group is much more diverse, with some of the individual counties, including Presidio and Zavala, remaining solidly Democrat, while others, including Kenedy and Hudspeth, are "ruby red." As a whole, the voting patterns of this group of 22 Hispanic-majority counties along the Rio Grande now reflect those of rest of the state of Texas, rather than those of the Democrat-dominated urban areas.

The large Republican shift in the Hispanic electorate cannot be attributed to changes in turnout. There was no significant change in turnout in this group of counties between 2020 and 2024. Furthermore, even if it was different individuals voting for Trump in 2020 than those who voted for Biden in 2016, the fact remains that they were Hispanic voters. Starr County, for example, was 97.7 percent Hispanic in the 2020 U.S. Census, and there is no reason to believe that percentage has changed significantly. Starr County voted for Hillary Clinton by a 60 percent margin in 2016, for Joe Biden by a 5 percent margin in 2020, and for Donald Trump by a 16 percent margin in 2024. What has happened in Texas since 2016 is a large-scale movement of Hispanic voters toward the Republican party. Although Trump is at the center of this movement, it has benefitted other Republicans as well. While Governor Greg Abbott lost this group of counties in 2022 and Senator Ted Cruz also did in 2024, both of these Republicans performed better there than they did in the group of ten urban counties. Cruz, in fact, did 11.7 points better in the twenty-two Hispanic-majority counties than he did in the ten urban counties and came within 2 percentage points of winning them. What remains to be seen is how long the Republicans will enjoy success among Hispanic voters after Trump is no longer the party's standard-bearer.

Last but not least, the 222 Texas counties that do not fit into either of the first two groups remain solidly Republican, increasing their margin for Trump from 38.0 percent in 2020 to 42.2 percent in 2024. In this group, only Hays County voted for Harris. Williamson County, which voted for Biden in 2020, voted for Trump in 2024. Also note that voter turnout in the Anglo-majority suburban and rural counties was higher in 2024, whereas it was lower in the most populous counties and little changed in the Hispanic-majority border counties. That indicates that increased Republican turnout and decreased Democrat turnout did occur, and can at least partially explain the Republic shift in the electorate.