In years past, Tarrant County was a pretty close bellwether for election results in the state of Texas. From 2004 through 2016, the closeness of their Presidential numbers with the statewide numbers was eerie. But since 2018 the talk has been about how Tarrant is on the verge of turning blue, which puts it at least a little to the left of the state as a whole. As I did before with Harris County, I thought I’d take a closer look at how statewide candidates have done in Tarrant County compared to the state overall, to see what it might tell me. We start as we did with Harris in the distant past of 2002:
2002 2004 2006
State Tarrant Diff State Tarrant Diff State Tarrant Diff
=================== =================== ===================
43.33 41.27 -2.06 38.22 37.01 -1.21 36.04 34.80 -1.24
39.96 38.53 -1.43 40.94 37.36 -3.58 29.79 31.07 1.28
46.03 42.63 -3.40 40.77 38.06 -2.71 37.45 37.06 -0.39
41.08 37.76 -3.32 42.14 39.15 -2.99 37.23 36.99 -0.24
32.92 30.86 -2.06 37.01 36.41 -0.60
41.48 37.94 -3.54 40.96 40.67 -0.29
37.82 34.85 -2.97 41.79 40.86 -0.93
41.49 39.02 -2.47 41.73 40.52 -1.21
40.51 37.55 -2.96 44.89 42.79 -2.10
41.54 38.73 -2.81 43.35 41.56 -1.79
41.89 38.49 -3.40
43.24 39.74 -3.50
45.90 42.26 -3.64
39.15 35.90 -3.25
42.61 39.20 -3.41
40.01 36.92 -3.09
Min -3.64 Min -3.58 Min -2.10
Max -1.43 Max -1.21 Max 1.28
Avg -2.96 Avg -2.62 Avg -0.75
You can read the earlier posts for the explanation of the numbers. The bottom line is that in early to mid Aughts, Tarrant was more Republican overall than the rest of the state. As was the case with Harris, there was a step in the Democratic direction in 2006, with the chaotic multi-candidate Governor’s race providing the first Democrat to do better in Tarrant than in the state, but it was still about a point more Republican than overall.
2008 2010 2012
State Tarrant Diff State Tarrant Diff State Tarrant Diff
=================== =================== ===================
43.68 43.73 0.05 42.30 40.98 -1.32 41.38 41.43 0.05
42.84 42.52 -0.32 34.83 34.97 0.14 40.62 40.41 -0.21
44.35 43.39 -0.96 33.66 33.90 0.24 39.60 39.20 -0.40
43.79 43.47 -0.32 35.29 35.24 -0.05 41.91 41.40 -0.51
45.88 44.16 -1.72 35.80 35.83 0.03 41.24 40.31 -0.93
44.63 43.51 -1.12 36.24 35.64 -0.60
45.53 43.81 -1.72 37.26 35.39 -1.87
43.75 42.49 -1.26 37.00 35.97 -1.03
35.62 35.17 -0.45
36.62 36.05 -0.57
Min -1.72 Min -1.87 Min -0.93
Max 0.05 Max 0.24 Max 0.05
Avg -0.92 Avg -0.55 Avg -0.40
Still slightly on the Republican side as we move into elections that feel more familiar to us – as I’ve said before, looking at those elections from 2002 through 2006 is like visiting a foreign country – and you can see how dead on the Tarrant Presidential numbers were. Tarrant was a bit more Republican in the judicial races than in the executive office and Senate races, but otherwise not much else to say.
2014 2016
State Tarrant Diff State Tarrant Diff
=================== ===================
34.36 36.13 1.77 43.24 43.14 -0.10
38.90 41.08 2.18 38.38 38.62 0.24
38.71 39.53 0.82 38.53 38.43 -0.10
38.02 38.91 0.89 41.18 40.49 -0.69
37.69 38.67 0.98 39.36 39.58 0.22
35.32 36.49 1.17 40.05 39.75 -0.30
36.84 38.14 1.30 40.20 40.91 0.71
37.25 38.43 1.18 40.89 40.59 -0.30
36.49 38.02 1.53
37.60 38.41 0.81
36.54 38.00 1.46
Min 0.81 Min -0.69
Max 2.18 Max 0.71
Avg 1.28 Avg -0.04
I wouldn’t have guessed that 2014 would be the year that Tarrant County officially became (slightly) more Democratic than the state as a whole, but here we are. Maybe because 2014 was such a miserable year, maybe because Wendy Davis was the Dem nominee for Governor, maybe it was just time. It wasn’t quite the start of a trend, as things snapped back a bit in 2016, but a threshold had been crossed.
2018 2020 2022
State Tarrant Diff State Tarrant Diff State Tarrant Diff
=================== =================== ===================
48.33 49.93 1.60 46.48 49.31 2.83 43.81 47.24 3.43
42.51 43.75 1.24 43.87 46.18 2.31 43.44 47.36 3.92
46.49 47.25 0.76 43.56 45.25 1.69 43.62 46.80 3.18
47.01 48.11 1.10 44.49 46.71 2.22 40.91 44.33 3.42
43.39 44.70 1.31 44.08 46.14 2.06 42.10 44.90 2.80
43.19 43.99 0.80 44.76 47.23 2.47 43.63 46.72 3.09
46.41 47.37 0.96 44.35 46.50 2.15 40.51 43.83 3.32
43.91 44.85 0.94 45.18 47.38 2.20 41.81 45.14 3.33
46.83 47.86 1.03 44.70 47.03 2.33 42.87 46.36 3.49
46.29 47.44 1.15 45.47 47.91 2.44 43.55 46.75 3.20
46.29 47.68 1.39 43.02 46.48 3.46
45.48 46.24 0.76 42.74 46.22 3.48
45.85 47.14 1.29
Min 0.76 Min 1.69 Min 2.80
Max 1.60 Max 2.83 Max 3.92
Avg 1.10 Avg 2.27 Avg 3.34
And thus, despite the small hiccup of 2016, the ball moved ever forward. It would be easy to look at the Tarrant County results in 2022, especially at the top, compare them to 2018 and 2020, and declare that Tarrant had backslid, but as you can see that would be a misreading of the data. I’m going to step a little out on a limb here and say that Tarrant will be Democratic at a Presidential level again in 2024, and there’s a good chance that will be true elsewhere on the statewide ballot as well. Going by the average gap in 2022, two other Dems would have carried Tarrant County in 2018. If the trend we see here continues, getting to about 45% statewide would probably be enough to win Tarrant in 2024. Please feel free to point at this and laugh at me if this turns out to be wildly off base. Until then, I’ll do this same exercise for a couple more counties, just for the fun of it.
As a longtime Tarrant County resident, this all looks correct to me. Most of the Democratic growth has been in the Southeast corner, Arlington, Mansfield, Grand Prairie, which has led to pick ups in the state house and JP/Constable/CC levels. I was pleasantly surprised we held our Arlington CC seat in the midterm.
It could have turned blue this year, if only Beat-0 had spent more time in places like this and less time in places like Muleshoe.