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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.