This is how the great Republican defeat in Texas was gestated

Dallas (Texas)Long before it emerged that James Talarico would be the winner in Texas, the Republican engine room already knew they had lost. Ken Paxton, their candidate for the United States Senate, was not gathering enough support in traditionally Republican districts. For this reason, the watch party that they had organized in Dallas to follow the election night, with popcorn and all kinds of drinks with ice cubes –everything has ice cubes in the United States, even wine–, was anything but a party. Not only did Talarico beat Paxton, but Texans looked to the left in the vast majority of votes that were at stake. This, despite the investment of more than 200 million dollars by the tycoon Elon Musk in the Texas campaign. In fact, the Senate race between Talarico and Paxton has broken the record for spending in a non-federal election.

The Democrats managed to conquer positions of power unprecedented since the nineties: apart from Talarico's victory in the US Senate, Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott and has become the first governor of Hispanic American origin in Texas. The blues also won the state House of Representatives, the attorney general, the commissioner for public finance control, school boards, or several seats on the Texas Supreme Court. The Republican Party retains the majority in the Texas Senate and won more representatives than the Democrats in the election for the House of Representatives at the federal level, but their strategy of gerrymandering (the modification of electoral districts to favor a party) to secure more seats in Washington did not go well either. What are the keys to this major defeat in Texas? What has happened so that in just two years this state has gone from being key to Donald Trump's victory to being a fundamental piece in his undoing? 

Tariffs and immigration

Texas is no longer the rural state we might have had in our imagination, but has instead become one of the great economic engines of the United States, with growth in recent years above the country's average. One only needs to look at one piece of data: it has nearly 400 airports and heliports, among which is Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), with more than 86 million annual passengers. In six years, since 2020, the population has grown by 8.8%, going from 29 million inhabitants to 31.7. In this context, the Trump administration's tariff policies and the hard line against immigration have acted like a boomerang against the Republicans. They have complicated business activity on an international scale and, at the same time, have reduced the available workforce. A situation that has been compounded by a generalized increase in the cost of living due to the rise in prices, especially energy, directly related to the war in Iran.

Latin vote

In this context, the Republicans have not retained the Latino vote that Trump did succeed in winning in the 2024 presidential elections. At that time, in the districts bordering Mexico, he seduced a significant bulk of Latinos, at a time of rising inflation during the Biden administration, and with a discourse in favor of business activity and more border control. However, these same voters have moved away from the U.S. president when he put his policies into practice: this October alone there was an ICE operation with the arrest of 4,000 undocumented immigrants. In fact, in the three counties that border Mexico, both Talarico and Hinojosa have won comfortably.

Data centers

One of the fundamental issues in these elections, especially at the state level, has been data centers, which are key to the new AI economy. Texas has become an attractive state for this type of investment because there are large tracts of land, and Google, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI have announced major investments there. However, the other side of the coin is that these centers, which are large physical facilities with very powerful computers, consume a large amount of energy, a lot of water to cool the servers, and, once built, they do not create as many jobs as other industries. The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, announced with Google a 40 billion dollar investment in Texas. Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate, made this issue one of the main topics of the campaign and has proposed a moratorium on the projects, accusing the Republicans of rolling out a fiscal red carpet for large companies without taking into account the residents. Abbott has ended up promising more controls.

Rural vote 

Data centers have also created a contradiction within the Republican electoral base: a division between voters who support economic liberalism and the rural community. According to a recent survey by the University of Texas, 62% of the population in rural areas opposes data centers. A tension within the coalition of voters who traditionally support Republicans that has been repeated with school vouchers. A proposal promoted by Abbott with a $1 billion endowment gives families the freedom to choose a school and allows funds intended for public centers to be used to pay for private schooling. Democrats oppose it, and it has generated controversy in the rural world, where the public school is a central institution. All of this has translated into a drop in Republican voter turnout or a direct shift in voting toward Democrats, especially in South Texas.

The Paxton and Talarico profile

One of the races that has generated the most anticipation has been the one between Talarico and Paxton. The designation of the Republican candidate was surrounded by controversy because he was dogged by scandals and corruption accusations, but he managed to secure Trump's support to defeat John Cornyn, a classic Republican, in the primaries. For his part, Talarico has managed to connect with both the traditional Democratic base and more conservative sectors of the electorate, as he has made religion linked to social justice a central element of his political discourse.