Latino Voters Could Power a Texas Senate Upset, and Both Campaigns Now Treat Them as a Swing Vote
Latino voters in Texas moved toward Republicans for a decade and gave Donald Trump a record 55 percent in 2024. Now, with costs rising and immigration enforcement hitting Latino communities, USA Today reports the GOP is losing those gains - and a bloc that decides South Texas is in play in the Senate race and in the 15th Congressional District.
Latino voters in Texas are hoping to cause an upset, and the numbers explain why both Senate campaigns are watching them. Over the past several election cycles, Hispanic voters in Texas slowly shifted away from the Democratic Party and toward Republicans, USA Today reported in its live Texas coverage. It came to a head in 2024, when President Donald Trump won more than half - 55 percent - of the Latino vote in the state, a 13-percentage-point increase from 2020, a record high for a Republican presidential candidate, according to data from the Texas Politics Project.
The shift had a map. In 2022, Republicans flipped Texas' 15th Congressional District, a majority-Hispanic district that makes up parts of the Rio Grande Valley, after the GOP made heavy investments to expand outreach in the area - ending a Democratic hold that had lasted a century. Two years later, the presidential numbers confirmed the movement was real and statewide, not a single-district story.
But Republicans are now losing the gains they made with Latino voters, USA Today reported, as costs - from beef to gas prices - rise, coupled with increased immigration enforcement that has hit Latino communities across the nation. The reversal has thrown a typically safe red state into closely watched and hotly contested races for Senate and governor. "Latino voters are putting an exclamation, are underlining the fact, that they're a swing vote," said Clarissa Martinez, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the 15th District itself. Bobby Pulido - a two-time Latin Grammy-winning artist from Hidalgo County - thinks he is the right type of Democrat to win the seat back, and he is locked in a tight race against incumbent Rep. Monica De La Cruz, the first Republican ever elected in the district. De La Cruz appears with Trump on Tuesday at his rally at the Port of Corpus Christi, a boost for a congresswoman who has been trailing in recent polling behind Pulido. With the Senate race in a dead heat and early voting running through Friday, the bloc that moved Texas politics for a decade may be about to move it again - in the other direction.
