Tarrant County hadn’t voted Democrat for president since 1964. How did Joe Biden win?
It appears Tarrant County has gone blue for Joe Biden. As election officials continue to tally ballots after election night, he has a lead of about 1,300 votes in a race where more than 800,000 votes were cast.
As of Monday morning, Biden had 49.2% of the vote, compared to 49.1% for Trump. His share of votes marks a gain of 6 percentage points over Hillary Clinton’s share in 2016. Trump’s share dwindled by 2 percentage points. Biden stands to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Tarrant County since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
So who were the voters who switched from Trump to the Democratic Party in this election? And where are the fastest-changing blue regions of the county? We delved into the data from the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections to find out.
A bluer county throughout
Biden’s success isn’t limited to Fort Worth. He attracted voters across the entire county. Of Tarrant County’s 600-plus precincts, Biden was leading in 335 of them as of Thursday. Trump was leading in 317 precincts. In 2016, with fewer precincts in the county, Hillary Clinton won 275. Trump won 345.
Most areas of Fort Worth were already blue in 2016, and almost every precinct that was red in 2016 turned blue for Biden, save for a few precincts southwest of downtown and in far north Fort Worth. Among the key areas of Fort Worth that shifted Democratic for the presidential election are downtown Fort Worth and the west side. Neighborhoods near TCU that had been slightly red in 2016 also turned blue. Overall, Biden won 58% of the Fort Worth vote, up from 55% of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 share. But his share of the vote was 2 percentage points lower than Beto O’Rourke’s in 2018.
Outside Fort Worth, the only major city that favored Biden was Arlington. Biden’s improvement over Clinton was four percentage points (52% to 56%), and much of the gain is visible in the Arlington neighborhoods north of Interstate 30. These neighborhoods either shifted to supporting Biden or to voting for Trump by a lesser margin. Similar to Fort Worth, Biden didn’t outperform O’Rourke, finishing with the same share of the vote.
North of Arlington and Fort Worth, Texas 121 and Interstate 820 marked the beginning of a red wall. Nearly every city to the north supported Trump, although his margins had decreased from 2016. The same was true in southern suburbs like Mansfield and Crowley.
In fact, Biden’s biggest percentage gains were in these deep red areas. He improved on Clinton’s share of the vote in Northeast Tarrant (Hurst, Euless, Bedford, Keller, Southlake, Grapevine, Colleyville and Westlake) by 8 percentage points, from 31% to 39%. And unlike in Arlington and Fort Worth, Biden fared better here than O’Rourke. He topped O’Rourke’s 2018 vote share by 2 percentage points.
Who switched to Biden and who switched to Trump
A major national and statewide theme surrounding the election centered on declining support among white voters for Trump and an increase in support among nonwhite voters. Although Biden won the vast majority of votes from nonwhite communities, exit poll data shows Trump won a larger share of nonwhite votes than any Republican in decades. Another storyline was the shattering of the belief among Democrats that turnout of nonvoters and occasional voters benefited their party. Was any of that true in Tarrant County?
There were about 50 precincts in Tarrant County featuring at least 100 voters where Biden gained on Clinton’s vote share by at least 10 percentage points and Trump’s vote share declined by at least 4 percentage points. The ethnic and racial breakdown of the precincts is about 75% white, 8% Black and 16% Hispanic. There were only two precincts, both in east Fort Worth, that increased by 10 percentage points for Biden and did not have a population with a white majority or white plurality.
Trump’s gains, given his decline compared to 2016, were obviously smaller. But there were 22 precincts in Tarrant County where Trump’s vote share increased by at least 5 percentage points. These precincts are mostly in Fort Worth and more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse than the rest of the county. The breakdown is 28% white, 19% Black and 45% Hispanic. White people are the plurality or majority in six of the precincts and Black people in five. Latinos comprise a plurality or majority in the other 11 precincts.
The reason for the change could be about Trump or Biden or 2020-centric issues in particular, rather than the Democratic Party as a whole. Just two years ago in these same precincts, Democrat Beto O’Rourke picked up a higher share of votes than Clinton in 2016.
In precincts with at least a 50% Hispanic population, O’Rourke earned 75% of the vote and Clinton 71%. Biden still dominated in these areas but gained 67% of the vote. Precincts with at least 50% Black population went 92% for O’Rourke, 91% for Clinton and 88% for Biden.
But any observations about support from the predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods are incomplete because of low turnout. In Tarrant County precincts with greater than 50% Hispanic population, just 45% of registered voters voted. That was about 25 percentage points below the countywide turnout rate. For the majority Black neighborhoods, it was 51%. The precincts with greater than 50% white population had a turnout rate of 72%.
Those mostly white precincts, with high turnout, saw the biggest jump in Democratic support and Republican decline at the top of the ticket in 2020 compared to 2016 and 2018. The Republican share of votes went from 60% to 58% to 55% in those precincts.
The future of Tarrant County
Democrats hoped the blue wave pushing Biden ahead of Trump in Tarrant would lead to votes for U.S. senate candidate MJ Hegar and other down-ballot candidates. It didn’t happen. Democrats didn’t pick up any of the Tarrant County state legislature races they assumed were in play.
Hegar didn’t fare much better. She received a lower share of vote than Biden in all but eight precincts, the lesser support visible in blue, purple and red areas of Tarrant. In Arlington precincts, for instance, Hegar was consistently 2 to 3 percentage points behind Biden.
“We have a lot more ground to cover,” said Allison Campolo, a Democratic activist and strategist and president of Tarrant Together.
Observing the blue advantage at the top and red advantage everywhere else, Campolo hypothesized that some Republicans who often didn’t vote had been inspired to turn out by a dislike for Trump but then chose to vote Republican down ballot. She still sees a path forward for Democrats in Tarrant County — and likely the rest of Texas — in building turnout among nonvoters and irregular voters and focusing on sensible progressive messages.
“The incredible inroads we made into Democratic infrastructure that had been written off by statewide and national Democrats for decades is evident,”said Campolo, who is president of the Democratic activist group Tarrant Together. “We need to keep up that pace and build on it, trying to get participation higher in areas of color and keep building the Democratic bench and infrastructure that has been lacking.”
Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas Republican strategist, was pleasantly surprised by the success of down ballot Republican candidates in Tarrant, believing voters were concerned about jobs and the economy and associated years of economic success with Texas Republican governance. “Republicans and swing voters and moderates and independents discerned between the top of the ticket and everybody else,” he said. “They understand that the Republican party is bigger than Donald Trump.”
But Steinhauser still envisions Tarrant as a purple county in the future, even when Trump is gone. “I think Beto and Biden have shown that they can make it competitive. They can win that county. You have to take it very seriously.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
