We knew Donald Trump would win Texas. But these vote numbers will stun you | Opinion
No one expected Donald Trump to lose Texas to Kamala Harris, not even Harris and her campaign staff.
The sweep and magnitude of the nationwide Trump triumph — he’s on track to exceed 300 electoral votes and win a popular-vote majority — has obscured how well he did in Texas, though. It was by far the best of his three campaigns here, and one of the strongest in recent memory.
Trump’s margin of victory was 13.9 percentage points, according to the final but still uncertified tabulation from the secretary of state’s office. He won 56.3% of the vote, the best presidential showing since 2004. He beat Harris by more than a million and a half votes.
In 2020, Trump won what was a comfortable margin at the time but now looks almost competitive. He beat Joe Biden by a measly 5.6 percentage points. In other words, in 2024, Trump doubled the gap over his last race.
He had done better in 2016, his first foray. Then, he won by 9 percentage points in Texas. So, the drop in 2020 had some people thinking the race would be close this year, even if not enough to justify Harris trying to win the state.
Not so much. In terms of raw vote totals, Trump won nearly half a million more than he did four years ago. Scatter a similar trend across the nation and you see how he beat Harris in a race considered likely to be one of the closest in history.
Overall, Trump’s Texas margin of victory was the biggest in more than a decade. In 2012, Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by 15.8% points. Before that, you have to go back to 2004, when George W. Bush racked up a 22.9-point win as a home-state incumbent.
One last number: Trump is the first Texas presidential candidate to exceed 6 million votes. In a booming state, those numbers spiral up, so the comparisons don’t mean as much as percentages.
Texas Republicans already controlled the state, but their hold on the Legislature deepened, and in the state’s marquee race, Sen. Ted Cruz won much more comfortably than anyone anticipated.
Trump’s coattails around the country appear to have been long. When you can make Texas even more Republican, you’ve clearly hit a winning formula.
This story was originally published November 6, 2024 at 1:18 PM.
