Texas is typically viewed as one of the safest states in the country for Republicans. But new voter data shows that Democrats may make the Lone State State more competitive in 2024 than it's been in decades.
According to the San Antonio Express-News, Texas has seen a surge of both new residents and new voters since 2018, with the state adding more than 2.5 million new registered voters to its rolls in the past six years. The last time that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was up for reelection six years ago, he narrowly defeated then-Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) by just roughly 215,000 votes statewide.
New voters don't necessarily mean more favorable territory for Democrats. Republicans prevailed in both the 2020 presidential and 2022 gubernatorial elections, for example. But the Express-News reported that many of the new voters added have been in some of Texas' bluest areas, including the I-35 corridor from Laredo to the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, the Houston metro area and in Austin and the surrounding counties.
In Harris County alone (which houses Houston), more than 670,000 new voters have been added to the rolls. Harris County went from being one of the reddest metropolitan areas in the United States to eventually voting for Barack Obama by just a few thousand ballots in 2008. However, in 2020, President Joe Biden carried the county with 56% of the vote, earning 217,000 more votes than former President Donald Trump.
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"They’re terrified," Harris County commissioner Rodney Ellis, who is a Democrat, said of Republicans in an interview with the Express-News.
Ellis pointed out that in response to the growing number of Democrats registering to vote in Harris County — where 16% of Texas' population lives — Texas' Republican-dominated legislature has taken several steps to weaken their opponents' influence in the Democratic stronghold. In 2021, this meant gerrymandering Harris County's three congressional districts in order to protect Republican members of the House of Representatives from losing their reelection bids.
Texas Republicans have also curbed Harris County's efforts to make voting easier and more accessible, ranging from decreasing the number of ballot drop boxes to just one per county in 2020 to restricting drive-by and all-night voting. The Lone Star State's largest county has also been subjected to numerous lawsuits from Republicans over how it conducted its 2022 election.
"They keep coming after us because we represent the future,” Ellis said. “They know as Harris County goes, eventually so will Texas.”
Current polls have Cruz and Allred effectively tied in the 2024 U.S. Senate race, with FiveThirtyEight's aggregated polling showing both candidates largely within the margin of error. Travis County, Texas Republican Party chairman Matt Mackowiak recently said in a memo that Texas was "too close for comfort" and that his party should treat Texas like a battleground state.
"We are in a competitive state and we are not going to win just sitting on our laurels," Texas Republican strategist Dave Carney, who has advised the campaigns of both Governors Greg Abbott and Rick Perry, told the Express-News.
Click here to read the Express-News' full report.