Texas Democrats Dream Again: Latino Early Voters Near 1.56 Million as Reuters Finds a State Within Reach — and Braced for Heartbreak
Reuters' eve-of-election Texas report finds Talarico narrowly ahead in most polls, no Democrat statewide since 1994, and Latino voters at roughly 28 percent of the early vote, nearly double their 2022 pace at this point.
Texas has been the Democratic Party's great unrealized hope for three decades, and on the eve of a midterm election that could decide control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats are dreaming again about breaking the Republican hold on the state — even as they brace for heartbreak, according to Reuters' Texas report published Friday, read in full this cycle. Most polls show Democrat James Talarico, a 37-year-old state representative, seminarian and former schoolteacher, narrowly ahead of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, Reuters reported, while Democrat Gina Hinojosa trails three-term Republican Governor Greg Abbott by just a few points in the governor's race. No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994, the longest drought in the nation.
Reuters, drawing on interviews with more than 40 voters, activists and organizers on both sides, identified three potential cracks in the Republican coalition: Latinos jolted by President Donald Trump's immigration raids, conservative women uneasy about Paxton's alleged marital infidelity, and, to a lesser degree, Republican men squeezed by rising prices and the war with Iran. 'This is the most competitive election between the parties that we have seen here since the early stages of Republican hegemony,' James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told Reuters. 'If Talarico or Hinojosa win, it's a political earthquake.'
The Latino numbers are the report's center of gravity. Latinos gave Trump 55 percent of their Texas votes in 2024, according to exit polling Reuters cited; now, among likely Latino voters, Talarico leads 54 to 41 and Hinojosa 56 to 42 in UT polling. About 1.56 million Latinos had cast ballots as of Wednesday — nearly double the number at the same point in the 2022 midterms, according to TargetSmart, a data firm that works mainly with Democrats — and Latinos make up roughly 28 percent of early voters, up from 20 percent at the same time four years ago, while white, rural turnout lags 2022 levels. Republicans remain confident: about 49 percent of Texas voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party against 40 percent for Democrats in UT polling, Republicans have spent over $300 million on ads supporting Paxton against $102 million for Talarico in FEC data Reuters cited, and Abbott strategist Dave Carney told the wire, 'We're going to win, absolutely.'
