Considering that presidential elections usually have higher turnouts, and all three elections were remarkably heated, Talarico’s extraordinary popularity is…interesting.
One thing I’ve warned about over the years is that Texas, which proudly positioned itself as the new Silicon Valley, was bringing in a lot of college-educated young people. In the 1950s, that would have been nice. In the 21st century, that meant bringing in leftists. It’s easy to assume, then, that these new immigrants handed James Talarico his new Senate seat.
However, population growth alone doesn’t fully explain what happened in Texas on Tuesday. I have no settled explanation for Talarico’s win. It’s just…well, odd, so I thought I’d share that oddity with you.
Talarico’s win was remarkable not only because a Democrat shattered Texas’s red wall for the first time since 1988, but also because of the sheer number of votes he received. His vote total exceeded the Texas totals of every Democrat presidential nominee since 2016, including Joe Biden, who previously held the record. Talarico also outperformed Colin Allred, the Democrat who challenged Ted Cruz for the Senate in 2024.
According to Decision Desk HQ, the latest reported figures as of this morning show Talarico receiving 5,445,185 votes. Compared to previous Democratic presidential candidates, he got 40.4% more votes than Hillary in 2016, 12.6% more than Kamala in 2024, and 3.5% more than Biden did in 2020, a year of record turnout.
The logical thing to do, of course, is to assign that vast difference to Texas’s rapidly growing population. After all, the more people who live in a state, the more potential voters it has—and, as noted, Texas has gone out of its way to attract people who probably lean left.
According to Census Bureau population estimates, Texas’s population increased from approximately 27.9 million in 2016 to 29.2 million in 2020 and 31.3 million in 2024. That represents approximately 12.2% growth over eight years. By July 2025, the total population had reached approximately 31.7 million. Those are big changes.
Population growth therefore helps explain why more people might vote for Democrats compared to a decade ago. But here’s the kicker: Population growth alone doesn’t fully explain Talarico’s remarkable performance.
First, the 12.2% population increase occurred between 2016 and 2024. You can’t logically use that entire eight-year increase to explain Talarico’s 12.6% advantage over Harris, who ran just two years earlier because much of that population growth had already occurred before Harris appeared on the ballot.
Second, it wasn’t just leftists who moved in. We all know conservative businesses and individuals who abandoned California, New York, Illinois, and other economically hostile Democrat-run states for Texas. They’d add to the Republican vote total.
Additionally, among the new residents are many who are children, noncitizens (whether here legally or not), people who never registered to vote, independents who would never vote for Democrats or Republicans, and people who just can’t be bothered. Even if a disproportionate number of Texas’s new adult residents favored Democrats, it’s unlikely that all did, or even could, vote.
However, a decade of presidential elections requires an analysis that goes far beyond this post. It’s easier to think small. The most revealing comparison is between Talarico and Colin Allred, who was the 2024 candidate Democrats fielded for the Senate.
In 2024, Allred received 5,031,249 votes in his unsuccessful race against Ted Cruz. Just two years later, Talarico received 413,936 more votes, an 8.2% increase. However, between July 2024 and July 2025, Texas’s population grew by only about 1.3%. Although complete 2026 population estimates are not yet available, the available figures indicate that population growth was substantially slower than the increase in Democrat Senate votes.
Turnout is also something one needs to consider. In 2024, approximately 11.29 million Texans voted in the Senate race. In 2026, approximately 9.89 million votes had been counted as of November 5—roughly 1.4 million fewer votes, a 12.5% decline.
Thus, Talarico received more votes for a Democrat in an election in which substantially fewer Texans voted overall.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Ken Paxton saw a 29% decrease in Republican votes, or about 1.74 million votes, compared to Ted Cruz just two years earlier. That, too, is inconsistent with population growth, although there are semi-plausible explanations.
The obvious ones include (1) Republicans voting for Talarico because, while Paxton is extremely conservative, they disliked him personally, and (2) Republican voters staying home to protest how Republicans, from the White House down, have handled domestic and foreign policy in the last two years. Some in Texas especially hate Trump’s tariff policies.
However, while I can easily envision Republicans sitting out the election out of pique, I’m less convinced that Republican defections alone explain Talarico’s remarkably high vote total. It is possible that he really was an inspiration to previously non-voting Democrats or that Independents were magnetically drawn to his charisma and platform. Without examining the actual voting patterns, though, we’re guessing. Possible, though, does not mean probable. None of these explanations feels…for want of a better word, right.
For now, the numbers, standing alone without any deeper analysis, don’t offer any easy explanation for the Texas anomaly. One thing is clear, though: Talarico’s historically large vote total cannot be dismissed as the inevitable result of Texas having more residents than in earlier elections. Population growth alone does not adequately explain the substantial increase in Democrat Senate votes between 2024 and 2026, especially when total participation in the race declined.
This is a mystery and is ripe for investigation. None of this data means anything nefarious happened. However, if Republicans don’t want to see this pattern repeated in 2028, they’d better figure out fast what went down in Texas in 2026.
