Colin Allred won Tarrant County, but Kamala Harris lost it. What exactly happened?
Democratic aspirations to unseat U.S. Senator Ted Cruz once again fell flat this election cycle. The incumbent fended off a challenge from U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, besting the Dallas area congressman by roughly 970,000 votes.
But Allred squeezed out a victory in Tarrant County, beating the sitting senator by a mere 1,251 votes, according to unofficial tallies. Allred even outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris, the highest ranking Democrat on the ticket, by roughly 17,000 votes; Cruz lagged behind his party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, by almost 27,000 votes, even though the former (and future) president carried Tarrant by an almost 43,000 vote margin.
Allred pulled off slim victories in county precincts that Harris had lost by similarly tight gaps. Here are some of the areas Allred clinched but Harris lost:
- Allred picked up several precincts north of Loop 820 that had swung Trump’s way, including Marine Creek Hills, parts of Fossil Creek and Sterling Creek, big chunks of Northbrook, and sections of the Alliance corridor and southeast Watauga. President Joe Biden had won some, but not all, of these precincts in 2020.
- Allred won several precincts around Bedford and Euless that had gone Biden’s way four years ago but chose Trump this time around. The gap between Allred and Cruz in some neighborhoods, like the precinct encompassing Bedford’s public library, amounted to fewer than 14 votes.
- Allred also outshined Harris in big chunks of southwest Arlington and Mansfield. The congressman won the northwest section of Mansfield, for instance, by 23 votes (amassing 1,295 in total); Harris received 1,243 votes in the area, losing to Trump by 125 ballots. Biden won few of these areas in 2020.
- Similar trends played out in south and west Tarrant County. Residents of west Crowley cast 788 votes for Harris, who ultimately lost the precinct by 44 votes. Allred won the same area by 73 votes. In a precinct just west of the car dealerships dotting Loop 820, Allred topped Cruz by just four votes, while Harris fell flat by 96.
What explains this apparent disconnect?
“The difference between the presidential race and the Senate race, I think, is just a comparative acceptability of the two candidates in each race,” posited Cal Jillson, a Texas politics expert at Southern Methodist University. “I think voters really across the country discounted a great deal of what Donald Trump said in favor of their memory of how things felt when Trump was president the first time.”
Many voters, unfazed by his tirades or criminal indictments, mentally associated the former president with steadier times and lower costs of living. Cruz, despite singing Trump’s praises for the better part of eight years, couldn’t match his allure.
“People give Trump a pass for remarkable things that he says and does,” Jillson said. “Whereas Ted Cruz, they have more of a sense that he is a partisan knife fighter, fighting for keeps.”
Tarrant experienced the inverse senate-presidential vote split in 2020. While county voters recoiled against Trump, they handed U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Trump endorsee, a comfortable win.
Still, in spite of the reservations of some Tarrant County voters, Cruz coasted to victory statewide.
“Both Trump and Cruz won easily, and the state turned a darker shade of red compared to 2020, moving the needle in the wrong direction from the perspective of Texas Democrats and in the right direction from the perspective of Texas Republicans,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.
The margins were tighter in 2018, when Cruz defeated Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso by roughly 215,000 votes.
Many Texan and out-of-state Democratic activists celebrated O’Rourke’s close loss as an unequivocal signal of Texas’ shift left, especially in rapidly growing parts of the state like Tarrant County. O’Rourke, like Allred, carried the county (by almost four times the number of votes). Some expect that leftward shift to continue, despite Harris’ loss.
“Those red areas are shrinking a little bit; blue areas are expanding a little bit,” Jillson said. “I do think that that Tarrant County, which is now the largest Republican led county in the nation, will be competitive going forward, and Democrats will become increasingly competitive as as demographic change takes place in the state.”
This story was originally published November 7, 2024 at 1:58 PM.
