Black Voters Backed Hinojosa at 88 Percent, the ABC Survey Estimates - Higher Than Hispanic Voters at 65 Percent
Texas' first Latina governor drew her strongest support rate from Black voters, an ABC News survey estimates: 88 percent, against 65 percent of Hispanic voters. The same survey says Hispanic voters were twice the share of the electorate - the difference between a rate and a pile of ballots is the real story of her coalition.
Gina Hinojosa's election as Texas' first Latina governor carries a coalition story inside it, and it is not the one the history books would have guessed. Black voters supported Hinojosa at a substantially higher rate than Hispanic voters did, according to voter polling published by ABC News and reported Friday: the survey estimated she received 88 percent of Black voters' support, compared with 65 percent among Hispanic voters - a gap of 23 percentage points. Both groups favored her; Black voters backed her more overwhelmingly.
The second set of numbers keeps the first honest. The same survey estimated Hispanic voters represented 24 percent of the Texas electorate, compared with 12 percent for Black voters - which means the group with the lower support rate likely contributed more ballots to Hinojosa's total. A larger percentage of a smaller population is not a larger number of votes, and the available evidence does not establish that Black voters alone delivered her victory over Gov. Greg Abbott. What it establishes is that they were central to her coalition, at an exceptionally high rate.
The Hispanic vote, meanwhile, was never one vote. An October N+ Univision poll conducted by YouGov found Hinojosa leading among Hispanic voters statewide while Abbott led among Hispanic respondents in North Texas - real regional variation inside one electorate. That survey also found 42 percent of Hispanic respondents saying their household finances had worsened over the preceding year, and 56 percent saying immigration enforcement had gone too far: concerns about money and enforcement, not representation alone, ran through the campaign. Electing a Latina governor is a historic milestone, but Hispanic voters made individual choices about party, policy and leadership, as voters do.
All of these figures are survey estimates, not an official count of ballots by race - Texas does not count votes that way. The question they leave for the transition is a governing one: how strong electoral support translates into influence over decisions on public education, health care, business opportunity and appointments, as Hinojosa - who this week named a bipartisan transition team - prepares to take office in January.
