For three decades, Texas has been one of the most solid territories for the Republican Party. No Democrat has won a state election there since 1994 and Donald Trump won in the state by 14 points in the last presidential elections, but the political climate is starting to change. According to an analysis published by Newsweek, for the first time in many years, Texas Republicans are openly discussing whether they will be able to retain everything they control.
The most striking signal arrived on April 8, when the lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, warned publicly that Republicans are going to have “a difficult time” to maintain the state House. It was not a minor phrase nor thrown into the air: Patrick directly linked that risk to the internal war between the different Republican factions in the Senate race. The warning was picked up by both Newsweek and The Texas Tribune and other Texan media.
The fight between Cornyn and Paxton aggravates the problem
The most delicate front is in the Senate race for John Cornyn's seat, in Republican hands since 1993. Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton will face off in a runoff on May 26 after neither exceeded 50% in the primaries. That internal fight has opened a crack that Democrats believe they can exploit in November.
According to Newsweek's analysis, Democrat James Talarico arrives at that scenario with a competitive public image and with polls showing very tight margins against either of the two possible Republican candidates. The magazine maintains that both GOP aspirants carry serious weaknesses for a general election: Cornyn due to political wear and tear and Paxton due to his high polarization and his judicial and impeachment history.
There are data that explain why the alarm goes off
The Republican alarm does not come only from an intuition. There are several recent data points that point in the same direction. In the March primaries, Democratic participation surpassed Republican participation in Texas for the first time in a midterm cycle since 2020, and it was the best Democratic figure of this type in many years. The Texas Tribune also highlighted that Democratic voters surpassed Republicans in a context of maximum mobilization in both parties.
Added to that is the late January shake-up in the 9th district of the state Senate, in Tarrant County. There, Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a special election in a territory that Trump had won by 17 points in 2024. The result was interpreted inside and outside of Texas as a warning sign for the GOP.
The republican stronghold remains standing, but no longer seems armored
Newsweek's analysis does not say that Texas has ceased to be Republican, and therein lies the key. What it suggests is something more subtle and more dangerous for the GOP: that the state no longer seems armored. The state House remains under Republican control and the gubernatorial race continues to be favorable for Greg Abbott, but the comfort margin is narrowing and retirements, open seats, and Democratic mobilization are putting real pressure on several areas of the state.
That climate change also has a demographic and electoral dimension. Texas is already a non-white majority state, with very strong growth in the so-called Texas Triangle -Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and Austin-San Antonio- and with an increasingly disputed Latino vote. Newsweek maintains that part of the Latino support that helped Trump in 2024 shows signs of retreat, although Republican strategists qualify that the party's structural advantage remains important.
What it politically means that Texas enters a risk zone
If Texas ceases to be a comfortable territory for Republicans, the impact goes much further than a concrete election. We are talking about one of the great symbols of the conservative map of the United States, of a state enormous in population, economic weight, and political representation. That the Republican leadership itself admits concern in that area is already, by itself, a political news item of great caliber.
The conclusion Newsweek leaves is powerful: for the first time in two decades, in Texas Republicans no longer discuss only how much they are going to win, but how much they can lose.