Republicans Won Starr County, Texas in 2024. Midterms Test Whether Gains Hold.
A single election cycle is rarely sufficient to establish durable partisan realignment, and Starr County's 2026 results will offer the clearest data yet on whether 2024 represented a structural...
Republicans carried Starr County, Texas, in the 2024 presidential election, marking the first time the party won the county in a modern general election, according to RealClearPolitics reporting published October 18, 2026. Starr County, located along the Texas-Mexico border, is the most Hispanic county in the United States by population share, with approximately 96 percent of residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The county had voted Democratic in every presidential election for which standardized county-level records exist. In 2020, Democratic nominee Joe Biden carried Starr County by approximately 52 percentage points over Donald Trump, according to certified Texas Secretary of State results. In 2024, that margin reversed, with Trump carrying the county, a swing of more than 50 points in a single four-year cycle according to the same state certification records.
The 2026 midterm elections present the first electoral test of whether Republican gains among Hispanic voters in South Texas represent a durable coalition shift or were tied to specific conditions present in 2024, including candidate-specific factors, national economic sentiment, and turnout patterns that may not repeat.
Starr County sits in Texas's 28th Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Henry Cuellar, who flipped his party registration following the 2024 cycle. The district's composition and its representative's party affiliation will both appear on 2026 ballots, making congressional results in the area a direct measure of continued or eroded Republican support among Hispanic voters there. The specific candidates on the 2026 ballot in TX-28 are a matter of public FEC filing record, though individual candidate fundraising comparisons were not included in the source material reviewed for this report.
National exit polling conducted by Edison Research in November 2024 showed Trump receiving approximately 46 percent of the Hispanic vote nationally, compared to 32 percent in 2020 as measured by the same methodology. That 14-point improvement in national Hispanic vote share provided statistical context for county-level swings like the one observed in Starr County, though exit polling carries a margin of error that county-certified results do not.
Political scientists who study Latino voting behavior have identified several factors that correlate with the 2024 shift in South Texas, including concerns about border economic conditions, small business ownership rates, and dissatisfaction with Democratic messaging on inflation. None of these causal links are established by a single election result, and Starr County's vote total is small enough, approximately 12,000 total votes cast in 2024 per Texas Secretary of State data, that individual-level conclusions carry limited statistical weight.
Republican party infrastructure investment in South Texas has been documented in Federal Election Commission filings, with the Republican National Committee and Texas GOP both increasing field office operations along the Rio Grande Valley in cycles preceding 2024. Whether that infrastructure has been maintained at comparable levels heading into 2026 is not confirmed in the source material reviewed and would be reflected in forthcoming FEC quarterly disclosures.
Democrats have also invested resources in reclaiming lost ground in the region. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee listed several South Texas-adjacent districts among its targeted retention and pickup priorities in documents published on its website in early 2026, though specific dollar allocations to Starr County-area organizing were not itemized in materials reviewed for this report.
Historical precedent offers limited guidance. Other demographic groups have experienced single-cycle swings that did not persist. Cuban-American voters in Miami-Dade County shifted sharply toward Republicans in 2020 and maintained that alignment in 2024, suggesting some realignments do persist. However, Mexican-American communities along the Texas border have distinct economic and political histories that make direct comparisons imprecise.
What remains unknown is whether voter registration trends in Starr County in 2025 and 2026 show net gains for Republicans, net gains for Democrats, or stability. Texas Secretary of State monthly voter registration reports would contain that data and are publicly available. Also unknown is whether 2026 candidate quality, local issues specific to the county, or national political conditions in the months before the election will replicate or diverge from 2024 circumstances. Certified 2026 election results from the Texas Secretary of State, expected in the weeks following Election Day, will provide the most direct answer to the question of whether Republican gains in Starr County are holding.