How Donald Trump Outperformed Ted Cruz in Texas

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election in Texas by 14 points, higher than the nine-point victory achieved by Republican Senator Ted Cruz in his reelection campaign.
In total Trump took 56.3 percent of the vote in the Lone Star State on Tuesday, compared with 42.4 percent for Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris according to The Associated Press (AP). Meanwhile, Cruz beat Colin Allred, currently a Texas House Republican, with 53.1 percent of the vote against 44.5 percent.
Nationally, Trump won a convincing victory picking up at least 301 Electoral College votes, according to AP, significantly ahead of Harris on 226. The news agency also has Trump ahead in Arizona, the only state it has yet to call which comes with 11 Electoral College votes, and on track to win the popular vote.
Allred beat Cruz in just 12 of Texas’s 254 counties, compared to 19 for Harris against Trump. An analysis of AP data by The Houston Chronicle concluded 239 counties in Texas shifted to the right in 2024 compared to the previous presidential election with Trump picking up counties such as Williamson and Tarrant that President Joe Biden won in 2020.
In 2020, then incumbent Trump defeated Biden in Texas by 5.6 percent of the vote, with 52.1 percent of the total versus 46.5 percent for his Democratic challenger. Four years previously he had defeated Hillary Clinton in the Lone Star State with 52.2 percent of the vote against 43.2 percent, a nine-percentage point lead.
Cruz also improved on his last election battle in 2018, during which he only narrowly beat Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke by 2.6 points, with 50.9 percent of votes cast versus 48.3 percent.
A survey conducted in October by the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project found 80 percent of likely Republican voters in the state regarded Harris as an “extreme liberal,” compared to just 45 percent who held this view about Allred.
Joshua Black, director of research at the Texas Politics Project, told The Texas Tribune the perception that Allred was more moderate likely gave the Democratic Senate candidate an election boost.
He said: “Allred was a more palatable choice for people uncomfortable with Cruz than Harris was for people uncomfortable with Trump.”
Newsweek contacted Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign and the office of Senator Ted Cruz for comment on Saturday via email outside of regular office hours.
Polling conducted in the weeks prior to the November 5 elections gave Cruz a lead of between 1 and 7 points in his Senate race, with some Democrats believing that they had a real shot at flipping the seat.
In the third quarter of 2024, Allred’s campaign raised $30.3 million, substantially ahead of Cruz who received $21 million across three accounts.
Tuesday’s election also saw a boost for Texas nationalists with 10 Republicans who have pledged to support a referendum on Texan independence elected to the state legislature.