Texas Democrats faced significant setbacks in the 2024 elections, losing ground in traditionally blue areas and important cities, despite prior expectations of demographic shifts favoring them. Newly elected DNC chair Ken Martin emphasized that Texas remains vital for the party’s future, highlighting the need for year-round campaign investments. However, demographic trends have not translated into electoral success, as many Hispanic voters have shifted towards Republicans. Party leadership faces internal debates on strategy, with candidates acknowledging poor organization and a failure to connect with working-class voters. Key figures, like Beto O’Rourke, stress that understanding voter concerns is essential for future success.
Setbacks throughout the once firmly blue Rio Grande Valley. Diminishing margins in major Democratic cities such as Houston and Dallas. Seats lost in the State House.
The disappointing outcome for Texas Democrats in the 2024 election left many party loyalists feeling disheartened. After years of believing that demographic changes, population growth, and swift urbanization were putting Democrats on the verge of flipping the largest Republican-led state in the nation, the November results felt like a significant setback.
However, Ken Martin, the newly elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, made Texas one of his first destinations during his inaugural tour across the country this week. His message was hopeful: Texas, the second-largest state, could still play a key role in revitalizing the national party.
“The future of the Democratic Party runs through Texas,” Mr. Martin stated in an interview in Houston, highlighting national demographic shifts moving away from traditional Democratic strongholds along the coasts and towards the South. “We are here right now to start laying the groundwork.”
Mr. Martin spoke on Wednesday between discussions with local Democratic activists, listening to their calls for ongoing investment in campaign infrastructure, in the same Houston hotel where Senator Ted Cruz celebrated his re-election victory against well-funded Democratic challenger Colin Allred just months prior.
Texas remains a significant challenge for Democrats, and Mr. Martin’s message speaks volumes not only about the hurdles faced by the party nationally but also about their ambitions for turning the state blue. With states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania becoming competitive, and population trends favoring the Sun Belt, Democrats recognize the need to cultivate new ground.
Currently, that ground does not appear to be particularly hospitable in Texas. The GOP governs all levels of state administration, no Democrat has been elected to statewide office since 1994, and the party struggles to organize effectively across the extensive and costly state.
Demographics were previously viewed as a political inevitability in Texas, where a plurality of residents are now Hispanic. The state boasts five of the nation’s 15 largest cities—Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth—and its population has grown increasingly diverse. Democrats expected these trends to eventually shift Texas from red to blue.
However, this vision has not materialized.
On the contrary, Hispanic voters in traditionally Democratic areas have shifted rightward, and in the most recent election, a large number of Democratic voters in urban centers chose to stay home.
Vice President Kamala Harris garnered over 400,000 fewer votes in Texas in 2024 than Joseph R. Biden Jr. did in 2020, even as the state’s population grew by about two million during those four years. Meanwhile, President Trump’s vote count in Texas increased by 500,000.
“Cycle after cycle,” Democrats are “sold this dream that it will flip,” remarked Delilah Agho-Otoghile, executive director of the Texas Future Project, which collaborates with progressive funding supporters on strategies to invest in the state.
“The way we lost in November presents a turning point that didn’t exist before,” she stated, emphasizing that Democrats require diligence and campaign investments rather than relying on any inherent shift within the voter base to improve their situation.
Despite the tough defeat in 2024, demographic shifts—particularly the changing patterns of where Americans reside—continue to drive Democrats’ enduring interest in Texas, which stands to gain four or more House seats following the 2030 census. Mr. Martin and others have asserted that Democrats must enhance their competitiveness in Texas, alongside states like Georgia, North Carolina, and even Missouri, where Mr. Martin also visited this week.
“We have to be present,” he stated about his party. “We need to show people that we genuinely care about their lives, not just their votes.”
Texas Democrats are still evaluating what went wrong in the last election and what actions should be taken next. Initial efforts have faced hurdles.
Immediately following the November defeat, state party head Gilberto Hinojosa suggested that Democrats should adopt more moderate stances on social issues, particularly regarding transgender rights.
This idea faced swift backlash, prompting him to apologize. Shortly afterward, he announced he would not seek re-election.
Candidates vying to succeed him as party leader have proposed various approaches, yet a common theme persists: the Democratic Party has lost touch with its working-class foundation.
“We’ve overlooked those who are marginalized, who find themselves as underdogs,” said Steve Miller, a pastor from Henderson in East Texas, who is running for the position.
Democratic activists acknowledged that the party failed to organize effectively in 2024, particularly among Hispanic voters, resulting in losses in many previously reliable blue counties in South Texas.
“We must confront the reality that we didn’t do enough work in South Texas,” added Lillie Schechter, a former chair of the Democratic Party in Harris County, which includes Houston. “The Republicans maintain a year-round office down there, while we have nothing.”
As a reflection of the divide, the Texas Democratic Party has filled just under 3,000 positions for precinct chairs, a form of local party organizer. In contrast, Republicans have filled over 4,200 such roles.
Tania Gonzalez-Ingram, a Democratic organizer who supervised the re-election campaign of Representative Vicente Gonzalez in South Texas, where he narrowly won in November, remarked that part of the party’s struggle stems from national Democrats adhering strictly to narratives centered around abortion and immigration, believing these issues would resonate with Hispanic voters.
“I don’t represent all Latinos, but socially, we’re not all that progressive,” Ms. Gonzalez-Ingram stated. “We’re witnessing Latinos gravitating towards the Republican Party because they are addressing financial issues.”
Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman from El Paso whose spirited Senate campaign in 2018 almost unseated Mr. Cruz, considered entering the race for the leadership of the Texas Democratic Party.
Yet after several weeks of discussions with elected officials, candidates, and party members, he explained in an interview, “it wasn’t evident that we were aligned.” Thus, he chose not to run.
“From my viewpoint, this doesn’t require rocket science; it’s common sense, and Democrats have lost their common sense,” Mr. O’Rourke said, seated in the living room of his El Paso home. “You need to listen to people. Their concerns must become yours.”
Despite the Democratic defeats, including his own, Mr. O’Rourke echoed Mr. Martin’s sentiment that Texas is more “essential” than ever.
“I truly do not envision a viable path to the White House for any Democrat in 2032 and beyond without Texas,” he stated. “We have no option but to solve this.”
For a time, it seemed that Democrats were gaining traction in the state. The party was narrowing the gap in presidential races, and in 2018, amid an opposition wave to the Republicans during President Trump’s early term, Mr. O’Rourke’s bid to oust Mr. Cruz fell short by less than three percentage points.
During this period, the Democratic Party began to reduce the Republican edge in the Texas legislature, with a wave of enthusiastic new Democratic state representatives winning elections in 2018. Furthermore, President Biden came within 6 points of winning Texas in 2020.
It seemed that change in Texas was imminent.
However, that potential did not materialize: Mr. O’Rourke ran for governor in 2022 and suffered a defeat. Democrats lost seats in the State House last year. Ms. Harris lost Texas to Mr. Trump by over 13 percentage points.