Texas Republicans lost ground in rural areas on Tuesday, according to a Texas Tribune analysis. Voters in many of the state's most reliably Republican counties either stayed home or voted for a Democrat, the analysis found. Roughly 90% of the counties that saw a drop in turnout were rural.
State Rep. James Talarico became the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in Texas since 1988. Tribune data shows he narrowed the gap with Republican voters in rural counties by about 10 percentage points since 2018. He also beat Beto O'Rourke's 2018 margin in exurban counties by about 15 points.
Drew Landry, a political science professor at South Plains College in Levelland, said the results show Republicans cannot take rural Texas for granted. He said Republicans did not want to talk about the big issues and paid a political price for it. Democrat Clayton Tucker, who will become the first Democrat to lead the state's agriculture department since 1990, also ran ahead of expectations in rural areas.