Diego Vita/ THE RIDER
After midterm elections, the results demonstrated Texas voters sought change. According to a political science professor, people may have voted for Democrats because Republican’s promises were not met.
As of Wednesday, the midterm elections results in Texas have Democrats James Talarico for U.S. Senator with 5,444,982 votes, and Gina Hinojosa for Texas Governor 5,230,789 votes.
In local races, Democrat Vicente Gonzales remains in his seat in the U.S. Rep. for District 34 with 66.16% in Cameron County. In Hidalgo County, Democrat Bobby Pulido won the U.S. Rep. for District 15 with 74.38%.
Mark Kaswan, professor for the School of Political Science, Public Affairs, Legal and Security Studies, said the results from the midterm election were not as expected.
“This election, the results are … to put it mildly, an earthquake, and you never see an earthquake coming, which is why I like that better than a tidal wave because you see a tidal wave coming,” Kaswan said. “Frankly, I don’t think anybody saw this election as becoming as strong as it was.”
He said he felt Democrats were going to do well in the elections, but the results proved “they did far better than anyone expected,” especially in Texas.
“The results in Texas are mind-blowing,” Kaswan said. “I don’t think anyone could have predicted that after 30 years, over 30 years of not winning a single statewide election, Democrats swept all of the statewide races, every single one, including the Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals.”
He said in 2025, President Trump told the Texas legislature to redistrict to give Republicans five additional seats in Congress.
“They did what what he asked them to do. The Republicans lost four of those five seats that they had specifically drawn to win,” Kaswan said. “And not only that, they lost two additional seats. So, Republicans actually ended up instead of with a net plus five, they ended up with a net negative one. … Then you go around the country and race after race, Nebraska sending a democrat … to the senate for the first time in 100 years. It’s just amazing.”
With Democrats flipping the Congress, he said they will be able to undertake investigations and deal more oversight over the executive branch.
“Oftentimes, one of the things when you have a party in the White House that’s different from the ones that control the Congress … [and] is really strongly opposed to the president, they can do things using their oversight capacity that make it very difficult for the executive branch to really operate,” Kaswan said.
In 2024, during presidential elections, Texas voted for Donald Trump, including Cameron (52.5%) and Hidalgo County (51%).
When asked about why residents change from voting for Republicans in 2024 to Democrats in Texas this midterm, he replied he thinks voters felt betrayed, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.
“They had been promised lower prices. They had been promised no new wars. … They had been promised immigration policy that was gonna be tough, based on, as President Trump put it, ‘the worst of the worst,’” Kaswan said. “So, what are people seeing? They see the highest gas prices that I think I’ve ever seen in Texas. … You go to the grocery store and everything else, you’re seeing a lot of higher prices. The new war in Iran, that’s the main cause of the main causes, but not the only cause for the higher prices.”
He said these factors including the immigration enforcement have made the people lose their trust in the Republican Party.
“I think [the Republican Party] may have a hard time getting it back,” Kaswan said. “Now, that’s not to say that people necessarily trust the Democrats, and … really the question there is whether the degree to which the Democrats are able to actually follow through on some of their promises.”
When asked whether ICE enforcement could change under the new administration, he replied Democratic representatives may not be able to eliminate ICE, but could cut back funding.
“There might be at least an attempt to put some limits on what they can do, but part of the problem for Congress is that they have to get Donald Trump’s agreement to any of those kinds of limits,” Kaswan said.
With Talarico as senator and Hinojosa as governor, he said a funding increase of higher-education institutions in Texas can be expected, as well as reversing budget cuts that happened under the Abbott administration.
“For example, under Abbott, there was a ban on any programs that would specifically benefit Mexican American students, because they saw that as part of the sort of DEI initiative,” Kaswan said. “It was actually written into legislation. So, that would have to get through the legislature, but some of that was executive orders. … Those executive orders could be overturned, which means additional services for students at … like UTRGV that have very large populations of Mexican American students.”
He said what makes this election one of the “most significant” is people realizing they have the power to make a change.
“That is absolutely the most important thing about this election, that it reminds people of their capacity, that Democracy matters. Elections matter,” Kaswan said. “And that the billionaires have a lot of power, but, you know what? … So do we.”
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