Democrats flip Texas governor’s office and every statewide office on the ballot
Hispanic voters moved sharply to the left in the midterm elections, helping Democrats sweep every statewide office on the Texas ballot and win battleground U.S. House races from coast to coast. The shift marked a remarkable pivot for a demographic that had moved toward Trump just two years ago.
Democrats capitalized on voters’ concerns over rising prices and government corruption to retake control of the House and Senate, and Hispanic voters joined in the broader rejection of Trump and his Republican Party. In Texas, every county voted more Democratic than it did in 2024, when Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race — and the more heavily Hispanic the county, generally the heavier the shift.
The shift was especially pronounced in Texas, where voters flipped a U.S. Senate seat and the governor’s office to Democrats along with every statewide office on the ballot. Roughly 7 in 10 Hispanic voters supported Democrat James Talarico in the Senate contest, while only about 3 in 10 voted for Republican Ken Paxton, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of voters and nonvoters that aims to tell the story behind election results. The group was essentially split in the 2024 presidential election. Younger Hispanics’ shift was even more pronounced, with swings of around 20 percentage points toward Talarico among Hispanic voters in Texas under 65 years old.
“We showed our power and flexed our muscle during this election,” said Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez, who won his battleground New Mexico district by around 17 percentage points after winning by less than 1 percentage point in 2022. Johnny Garcia, a sheriff’s deputy who won a newly created House district in the San Antonio area where Trump won by 10 percentage points in 2024, called the result “our lightning-in-the-bottle moment.” “We were able to make such historic gains that we probably never conjured, especially here in Texas,” Garcia said. “The only way we did that is by going after the issues that were meaning the most to people.”
In the Rio Grande Valley, Cindy Candia, a 56-year-old lifelong Democrat, said she was thrilled to see her party find success for the first time in her 20 years living in Texas. She pointed to incoming Gov. Gina Hinojosa, who grew up in the valley, where Candia lives. “She’s a woman, she’s Hispanic, she is from Brownsville, and I don’t think anybody thought that Texas would vote for that, for that type of person,” Candia said.
Democrats won every House district that touches the U.S.-Mexico border — seats in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California — for the first time since 2008. In Florida, where Republican Sen. Ashley Moody narrowly won reelection, less than half of Hispanic voters supported her, after Trump definitively won the group’s support two years earlier with 55%.
In southwestern Kansas, three Hispanic-majority counties that voted overwhelmingly for Trump flipped to backing Adam Hamilton, who became the first Democrat in nearly a century to win a U.S. Senate contest in the state. Turnout surged 27% over 2022 in the three counties — Finney, Ford and Seward.
Nationally, about one-third of Hispanic voters said they backed the Republican in their local U.S. House race, while roughly 4 in 10 voted for Trump two years ago. In House districts where at least a quarter of the citizen voting-age population is Hispanic, the Democratic share ran about 11 percentage points higher on average than Harris’ 2024 performance, according to the AP’s analysis; other House districts saw a 7-percentage-point gain on average. In majority-Hispanic counties, Democratic Senate candidates exceeded their party’s 2024 results by more than 15 percentage points.
The election also expanded Hispanic representation in Congress. Fourteen Hispanic Democrats were newly elected on Tuesday, 10 of them in districts currently represented by Republicans or redrawn to favor the GOP, and Rep. Linda Sanchez of California, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ campaign arm, CHC BOLD PAC, said the caucus will have more members than ever before. Leticia Gutierrez, a Democrat who won a Houston-area House district that Texas Republicans redrew in a failed attempt to pick up five more seats in the state, said Latino voters want someone “understanding of their issues” to represent them on Capitol Hill. “I’m gonna carry all of those things with me to Washington to be able to have that lens,” Gutierrez said.
In Colorado, Manny Rutinel, a Democrat who defeated Republican Rep. Gabe Evans, said voters responded to his life story, trusting that he understands their economic concerns after growing up in a family that sometimes struggled to make ends meet. “I think that they elected me because they know that for me it’s deeply personal,” Rutinel said.
Latinos have been especially affected by Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement, which stood alongside economic concerns as a prominent issue in some of the most heavily Latino districts. Though Trump’s promise to arrest and deport immigrants living in the country illegally was popular during his campaign, Americans now disapprove of his approach to immigration enforcement.
“Everybody voted for him, but the people that voted for him, he’s locking them up,” said Elton Reid, a 44-year-old Latino voter and full-time caregiver for his father in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “Like he promised them the world, and he didn’t come through with it, and now he’s locking them up.” Reid voted for Democrats in his battleground district, where Democrat Bob Brooks defeated Republican Rep. Ryan McKenzie.
Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk, a Latino Democrat, said the shift toward Democrats hinges on the party keeping its campaign pledges. “They saw betrayal from Trump after they gave him a chance in 2024,” Tuerk said. “And they went with the Democrats, and they’re giving them a chance now.” “But,” he added, “they’re on probation.”