Collin's shift came with split tickets
Trump received 54% of Collin County's vote in 2024. Two years later, the longtime Republican stronghold backed Talarico for Senate and Gina Hinojosa for governor. But voters also elected Republican Chris Hill as county judge, KERA reported, showing that support for Democrats did not extend across the ballot.
The editorial board cautioned Democrats against treating the result as a permanent realignment. In a county with a median household income of $127,000, it argued, the outcome did not amount to a rejection of conservatism. The board also acknowledged that it could not establish what drove individual voters' choices.
Its argument focused partly on the county's changing population and the hostility directed at some residents. More than one-fifth of Collin residents were born outside the United States. Frisco, formerly a small farming community, now has 236,000 residents; fewer than half are white, and roughly one-third identify as Asian. Its Indian-American population has grown.
The board described Frisco's families as largely affluent and conservative, but said their routine concerns had been displaced at City Council meetings by attacks on Indian residents. Speakers accused them of taking jobs through H-1B work visas, and one mayoral candidate called them "rats."
The editorial connected those local attacks with rhetoric and proposals from Texas Republicans. Gov. Greg Abbott proposed barring H-1Bs at Texas public schools and universities, while Paxton said he would investigate visa fraud. The board also cited Bo French's racist post about South Asian students at the University of Texas.
Voting maps for Collin and Denton counties showed Democratic majorities across most of Frisco, especially in eastern neighborhoods near a prominent Hindu temple, the editorial noted. Large areas of McKinney also voted Democratic after a recent dispute over a mosque.
Tarrant Democrats win beyond the county judge's race
Simmons' victory followed O'Hare's mid-decade redistricting effort, which the editorial board described as an attempt to weaken Black voting power and redraw her commissioner district. The Republican-majority Commissioners Court also eliminated 92 polling places for the midterms.
Simmons defeated O'Hare decisively, and Democrats secured a 4-1 majority on the Commissioners Court. Their gains extended to every contested countywide race, according to unofficial county results reported Nov. 4 by CBS News Texas. Tiffany Burks defeated incumbent Republican District Attorney Phil Sorrells; Democrats also captured the district clerk and county clerk offices and won multiple judicial races.
Early voting reached a county midterm record, according to KERA News. The Tarrant County Elections Administration recorded 571,950 voters from Oct. 19 through Oct. 30, out of more than 1.37 million registered voters. The total was 47% higher than the 389,285 early voters in 2022 and exceeded the 432,756 recorded in 2018.
An earlier Democratic victory had suggested that a broader shift was possible: Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganns in February's special election for Tarrant County's Senate District 9. Discussing turnout, TCU political science professor Keith Gaddie told KERA: "It was high turnout at the time, it was high turnout now. It replicated itself, and it rippled down the ticket."
A statewide sweep breaks decades of Republican control
The suburban results were part of a Democratic sweep of every statewide race on the Texas ballot, KERA News reported. In the Senate contest, Associated Press results as of Nov. 5, with 99% of votes counted, put Talarico at 55.1% and Paxton at 43.0%, a margin of about 12.1 percentage points.
Talarico became the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988. His victory also broke Republicans' roughly 32-year hold on statewide offices, marking the first Democratic statewide win since 1994, according to Houston Public Media and KERA.
Hinojosa defeated Abbott, who conceded on election night. She would be Texas' first Democratic governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995, as well as the first Latina and first Hispanic person to hold the office, CBS News Texas reported.
The election set a Texas midterm record for ballots cast, with about 9.8 million voters participating, according to early results from the Texas Secretary of State's Office. Participation amounted to 51.64% of registered voters, below the 53% recorded in 2018.
CBS News reported that the Senate contest was the most expensive non-presidential race on record, with $544.5 million in advertising spending. Elon Musk contributed $150 million to efforts supporting Paxton.
Border voters also moved away from Republicans
The editorial board also pointed to border counties that had helped Trump in 2024 but voted overwhelmingly Democratic this time. Latino entrepreneurs told The New York Times they were frustrated with immigration roundups targeting people in their communities and the region's construction industry.
The board argued that small-government principles and socially conservative values appeal to many Latino, Asian, Muslim and Black Texans, giving Republicans potential supporters across those communities. It ended by asking the party: "Who decided they were the enemy?"
