“Tarrant County is the 15th-largest county in the country, so it should get a lot of attention. And it’s the third-largest county in Texas, so it makes sense that there would be a lot of focus there,” said Mark Hand, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. “The reason there is and should be so much focus on Tarrant County is that it’s one of the very few large counties where Republicans have held power for a long time, and that’s now very much contested.”
In 2020, Tarrant voters narrowly supported President Joe Biden over incumbent Trump, turning the county blue by just over 1,800 votes. Biden is the second Democratic presidential candidate to win the county following Lyndon B. Johnson’s victory in 1964. Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke also won the county in 2018, beating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
Meanwhile, all countywide positions continue to be held by Republicans.
As Election Day approaches, voters, candidates and political experts alike are wondering: Will Tarrant swing back to red or continue trending toward blue? Is the future of Tarrant County purple?
James Riddlesperger, a political science professor at Texas Christian University, said there’s reason for Democrats to think they might be more competitive in Tarrant County than ever before.
“Certainly, the numbers over the last several election cycles show that Tarrant County is narrowing in its gap between Republicans and Democrats,” Riddlesperger said. “But, on the other hand, all things being equal, you would have to say that the Republicans have a fairly significant advantage in Tarrant County simply because of the kind of voting habits of Tarrant County over the last third of a century, where Republicans have been so firmly in charge.”
Riddlesperger said a variety of factors could influence whether Tarrant County tilts blue again at the top of the ticket this election cycle — or not.
Voting patterns can be hard to change, Riddlesperger said. And the history of Republican support in Tarrant has positioned the party’s candidates for success thanks to greater political experience, resources and favor, he added.
“Those are some of the things that are kind of stubbornly holding on in Tarrant County,” Riddlesperger said. “The only thing we know for sure is that Tarrant, like all counties, will change over time, but you can’t really predict which direction it will change.”
The political landscape looks different than it did in 2020, he noted. Four years ago, one of the top issues on voters’ minds was COVID-19, and many people were troubled by Trump’s response to the pandemic. With the current election, top issues include reproductive health, changing perceptions of the economy, and the Israel-Hamas war.
Riddlesperger said changing voter demographics could also lead to new voting patterns in Tarrant. As older voters die, young voters of newer generations replace them, he said.
“The electorate in Tarrant County isn’t the same as four years ago. We’ve had a lot of migration in Tarrant County,” Riddlesperger said. “It’s growing rapidly, so we’re going to have more voters, and some of those new voters are not going to be as steeped in the history of Tarrant County as the voters who were four years ago.”
There’s a table in this story that shows how up until 2016, Tarrant County was an eerily accurate predictor of what percentage of the vote the statewide candidates would get. Beto overperformed by a little more than a point in 2018, then Biden in 2020 and Beto again in 2022 outperformed by more than that in Tarrant, carrying the county and 2018 and 2020 but falling short in 2022. I covered all of that here. What this basically means is that Tarrant, like Harris and pretty much all of the big urban counties, is now more Democratic than the state as a whole is. And what that means is that whether Tarrant goes blue, either at the top of the ticket or all the way down, is at least partly a function of how Dems are doing overall. If this trend continues and if statewide Dems are consistently getting 45-46%, then I think there’s a decent chance some Democratic candidates for county office could break through.
I don’t know what the odds are, and I don’t know if the hard-right turn of the Tarrant GOP, exemplified by its County Judge and Sheriff and especially its noxious Republican Party Chair, will help or hinder that trend. As is the case with Harris, much of Tarrant’s county government is up for election in 2026, so continuing that trend and making a bigger push to win statewide would be a big help. It’s not just the symbolic value, it’s the removal of power from some bad actors, and also potentially putting a significant number of legislative seats in play. I’ve said before, the margin of partisan advantage that Tarrant Republicans get in their State Rep districts look a lot like what Dallas Republicans were getting in the 2010s, and we know where that ended up when Dallas County finally got too blue to sustain them. Dems don’t have a path to taking over the Lege without taking a big part of Tarrant County with them.
So yeah, outside of the Harris County-involved races and the State Rep districts of interest, I’ll be keeping an eye on Tarrant County. How Dems do there matters, for this election and the next.