A high-stakes Texas primary exposed the Democratic Party’s fault lines

One thing was clear before James Talarico’s win over Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Texas Senate Democratic primary Tuesday night. This contest wouldn’t be about policy or ideology; it would be a choice between two very different types of “fighters,” decided along racially polarized lines. 

Talarico, a state representative and seminarian, offered grit paired with Christian compassion — a welcoming message to frustrated moderates and disappointed Republicans that pinned the blame for the country’s problems on The System.

That contrasted with Crockett’s fiery campaign of confrontation — of pinning the blame on Donald Trump and Republicans. Crockett believed in mobilizing the base; Talarico pitched expanding the tent.

A racially divided Democratic electorate made this decision. Talarico’s victory came with support from white voters, particularly college-educated white voters, and with a boost from Latinos in Texas, the nation’s newest swing voters. Crockett’s coalition, meanwhile, counted on huge margins among Black voters to offset her weaker white and Latino support.

This division leaves Talarico with a crucial task in the next eight months: building trust with Black voters, winning back more moderate Latino voters, and making inroads with conservative white voters, who still make up the lion’s share of the Texas electorate. It also reveals tensions for Democrats nationally as they head into primary season: both the push and pull between more college-educated white voters in their coalition and more working-class Black voters, with the additional wild card of Latino voters .

A race decided along racial lines

For most of the primary contest, style was the big difference between Talarico and Crockett’s campaigns. They both occupied similar spots on the ideological spectrum, didn’t differ much on substance, but campaigned very differently. 

Early on, Crockett faced criticism for arguing that she didn’t believe she had to win over Trump supporters in order to win a general election. “(Texas) Democrats have tried to talk to every Republican they can to try and get them to come over here. It hasn’t worked,” she argued even on the last day of campaigning. “If we just get the base to turn out, we can win.”

Her campaign’s theory was to double down on Black voters, particularly through outreach at Black churches, and appeal to progressive or traditionally Democratic Latino voters.

Talarico, meanwhile, was criticized for not being able to hold strong support among Black Texans, and relying on white Democrats as his base. And in the closing weeks of the contest, racial identity became a bigger flash point. 

Crockett accused Talarico of boosting ads that were “straight up racist,” and called out “dog whistles” from those questioning her electability. Meanwhile, allies like former Rep. Colin Allred, the 2024 Senate nominee, blasted Talarico for allegedly referring to him in private as a “mediocre Black man,” an accusation that Talarico strenuously denied.

Ahead of Tuesday night, the few public polls released showed anything from a tied race to a double-digit lead for either candidate. But aggregates of polls did confirm these racial trends. Talarico enjoyed double-digit support from white Democrats — a more than 20-point margin per the Democratic strategist Adam Carlson’s crosstab aggregator — and he seemed to gain with these voters as Election Day neared. Crockett, meanwhile, was sweeping the Black vote, holding a 72-point margin in the aggregate. 

That left a big open question about how Latino voters would swing. Those polls showed Talarico with a modest 8-point advantage, but didn’t show a sharp break in favor of either candidate.

On Election Day, both candidates’ bases of support bore the polls out: Talarico had the highest margins around his home district of Austin, a wealthier, whiter, and more college-educated urban center. He also made big inroads with white college-educated voters in the Houston area. Crockett, meanwhile, was buoyed by voters in her home district in the Dallas area, and in Houston — the two parts of the state where, combined, more than half of Black Texans live.

Complicating all of this was a familiar enemy: voter suppression. Reports came in throughout the day of voters being turned away from voting booths because of changes to how the state conducted its elections, particularly in the Dallas area. Republicans decided to hold separate primary contests this year from Democrats, requiring a switch to precinct-based voting instead of countywide voting — meaning many voters went to the wrong polling place.

But the real surprise in the night came from Latino voters, as vote in the parts of Texas with larger Latino populations proved decisive. In the Rio Grande Valley, in the San Antonio area, in border counties, and in Hispanic parts of Houston, Latino-dominated electorates voted heavily for Talarico.

Because of this level of Latino support, the final picture of the Texas map may end up being a sharply polarized picture: of strong support for Crockett in the east of the state, but Talarico support everywhere else.

“This is a unique moment because of the racial background of the candidates. There was no Latino candidate — that would’ve changed things — and race was injected as a strategy,” longtime Latino vote strategist Mike Madrid told me. “It’s undeniable that [the Crockett campaign and its surrogates] were saying we need minority voters to vote as a bloc here to get out of this primary.”

Instead, Madrid told me, Latino voters continued to buck expectations, not easily fitting into the model of “minority voters” or responding to appeals to solidarity as “voters of color.”

Even after 2020 and 2024, and the rightward shift of Latino voters that came with it, “there’s still this very dominant belief amongst national Democrats, certainly the elites and elected class, and certainly within Black power structures, that if you’re not white, you’re somehow going to vote as a bloc,” Madrid said. The Texas results, at least, suggest that “you can’t understand what’s happening if you look through a traditional model of minority voting behavior.”

Talarico now faces the challenge of applying his theory of expanding the tent before the general election, where he is likely to face ultra-MAGA-loyalist and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who will head to a run-off against incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Polls of a theoretical Talarico-Paxton matchup before the primary showed a real race — something that would be a bit of a novelty in the state. Trump won Texas by 14 points in 2024 — improving his margins in part because Latino voters continued to abandon Democrats. 

Now, national polls suggest this Latino support might be shifting away from Trump and Republicans again — creating a new proving ground for Talarico’s campaign strategy. And if his model of voter outreach proves itself, Democrats might actually have a shot at the tantalizing dream of turning Texas blue.