For about a hundred years, from after Reconstruction until the 1990s, the Democratic Party dominated Texas politics, making it part of the Solid South. In a reversal of alignments, since the late 1960s, the Republican Party has grown more prominent. By the 1990s, it became the state's dominant political party and remains so to this day, as Democrats have not won a statewide race since Bob Bullock won the 1994 Lieutenant gubernatorial election.
Texas is a majority Republican state with Republicans controlling every statewide office. Texas Republicans have majorities in the State House and Senate, an entirely Republican Texas Supreme Court, control of both Senate seats in the US Congress. Texas is America's most-populous Republican state. A number of political commentators had suggested that Texas is trending Democratic since 2016, however, Republicans have continued to win every statewide office through 2025. Despite continued victories, the margin of victory for Republicans in statewide races has continued to shrink. Greg Abbott's gubernatorial win in 2014 was by more than 20 points, shrinking to 13 in 2018, and to just under 11 points in 2022. In 2020, Donald Trump won the state by less than 6 points, the narrowest margin of victory for a Republican since 1996. Notably, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if he had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters. Despite the narrowing margins, in 2024, Trump won Texas by double digit margins once again, proving Texas remains a solidly red state.
The 19th-century culture of the state was heavily influenced by the plantation culture of the Old South, dependent on African-American slaves, as well as the patron system once prevalent (and still somewhat present) in northern Mexico and South Texas. In these societies, the government's primary role was seen as being the preservation of social order. Solving individual problems in society was seen as a local problem with the expectation that the individual with wealth should resolve their own issues. These influences continue to affect Texas today. In their book, Texas Politics Today 2009-2010, authors Maxwell, Crain, and Santos attribute Texas' traditionally low voter turnout among whites to these influences.Maxwell (2009), p. 22. But beginning in the early 20th century, voter turnout was dramatically reduced by the state legislature's disenfranchisement of most blacks, and many poor whites and Latinos.Texas Politics: Historical Barriers to Voting, accessed 11 Apr 2008
History of the Republican Party in Texas As a response to the Congressional Reconstruction Act, which was passed in 1867, Texans banded together to what is now called the "Republican Party". Those called "radical republicans" disagreed with President Andrew Johnson's proposal for lenient Reconstruction policies. These republicans believed in the liberation of African Americans and that they deserved to have the same rights as everyone else. The Reconstruction Act of 1867, which designated the actions necessary for the former Confederate states to rejoin the Union was mostly crafted by these Radical Republicans. In order for the rebel states to rejoin the Union, they had to craft a new constitution, which could only be approved through majority consent of residents including African Americans, divide into five military districts (not including Tennessee), and ratify the 14th amendment of the Constitution. After abiding to these stipulations, these states would regain full representation in Congress. These endeavors resulted in the official establishment of the Republican Party. A majority of these party members were freed African Americans, immigrants, and Texas Unionists. The party gained more popularity after demanding that any government official involved in the Rebellion was removed from office. The party continued to grow as it rallied for risky plans that ultimately made the economy boom.
Democratic dominance: 1845–mid-1990s From 1848 until Dwight D. Eisenhower's victory in 1952, Texas voted for the Democratic candidate for president in every election except 1928, when it did not support Catholic Al Smith. The Democrats were pro-slavery pre-Civil War, as Abraham Lincoln was a Republican in the North. Most Republicans were Abolitionists. In the mid-20th century 1952 and 1956 elections, the state voters joined the landslide for Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Texas did not vote in 1864 and 1868 due to the Civil War and Reconstruction).
In the post-Civil War era, two of the most important Republican figures in Texas were African Americans George T. Ruby and Norris Wright Cuney. Ruby was a black community organizer, director in the federal Freedmen's Bureau, and leader of the Galveston Union League. His protégé Cuney was a person of mixed-race descent whose wealthy, white planter father freed him and his siblings before the Civil War and arranged for his education in Pennsylvania. Cuney returned and settled in Galveston, where he became active in the Union League and the Republican party; he rose to the leadership of the party. He became influential in Galveston and Texas politics, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential black leaders in the South during the 19th century.
From 1902 through 1965, Texas had virtually disenfranchised most Black, many Latino, and poor White people through the imposition of the poll tax and white primaries. Across the South, Democrats controlled congressional apportionment based on total population, although they had disenfranchised the black population. The Solid South exercised tremendous power in Congress, and Democrats gained important committee chairmanships by seniority. They gained federal funding for infrastructure projects in their states and the region, as well as support for numerous military bases, as two examples of how they brought federal investment to the state and region.
In the post-Reconstruction era, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Republican Party became non-competitive in the South, due to Democrat-dominated legislatures' disenfranchisement of blacks and many poor whites and Latinos. In Texas, the Democrat-dominated legislature excluded them through passage of a poll tax and white primary. Voter turnout in Texas declined dramatically following these disenfranchisement measures, and Southern voting turnout was far below the national average.
Although black people made up 20 percent of the state population at the turn of the century, they were essentially excluded from formal politics.W. Marvin Dulaney, "African Americans", Handbook of Texas Online, accessed 22 February 2014 Republican support in Texas had been based almost exclusively in the free black communities, particularly in Galveston, and in the German counties of the rural Texas Hill Country inhabited by German immigrants and their descendants, who had opposed slavery in the antebellum period. The German counties continued to run Republican candidates. Harry M. Wurzbach was elected from the 14th district from 1920 to 1926, contesting and finally winning the election of 1928, and being re-elected in 1930.
Some of the most important American political figures of the 20th century, such as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Vice President John Nance Garner, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, and Senator Ralph Yarborough were Texas Democrats. But, the Texas Democrats were rarely united, being divided into conservative, moderate and liberal factions that vied with one another for power.
Increasing Republican strength: 1960–1990
Beginning in the late 1960s, Republican strength increased in Texas, particularly among residents of the expanding "country club suburbs" around Dallas and Houston. The election, to Congress, of Republicans such as John Tower, (who had switched from the Democratic Party) and George H. W. Bush in 1961 and 1966, respectively, reflected this trend. Nationally, outside of the South, Democrats supported the civil rights movement and achieved important passage of federal legislation in the mid-1960s. In the South, however, Democratic leaders had opposed changes to bring about black voting or desegregated schools and public facilities and in many places exercised resistance. Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, southern white voters began to align with the Republican Party, a movement accelerated after the next year, when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, providing for federal enforcement of minorities' constitutional right to vote. Voter registration and turnout increased among blacks and Latinos in Texas and other states.
Unlike the rest of the South, however, Texas voters were never especially supportive of the various third-party candidacies of Southern Democrats. It was the only state in the former Confederacy to back Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election. During the 1980s, a number of conservative Democrats defected to the GOP, including Senator Phil Gramm, Congressman Kent Hance, and GOP Governor Rick Perry, who was a Democrat during his time as a state lawmaker.
John Tower's 1961 election to the U.S. Senate made him the first statewide GOP officeholder since Reconstruction and the disenfranchisement of black Republicans. Republican Governor Bill Clements and Senator Phil Gramm (also a former Democrat) were elected after him. Republicans became increasingly dominant in national elections in white-majority Texas. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976. In the 1992 election, Bill Clinton became the first Democrat to win the Oval Office while losing Texas electoral votes. This result significantly reduced the power of Texas Democrats at the national level, as party leaders believed the state had become unwinnable.
Republican dominance: mid-1990s–present
Despite increasing Republican strength in national elections, after the 1990 census, Texas Democrats still controlled both houses of the State Legislature and most statewide offices. As a result, they directed the redistricting process after the decennial census. Although Congressional Texas Democrats received an average of 45 percent of the votes, Democrats consistently had a majority in the state delegation, as they had in every election since at least the end of Reconstruction.
In 1994, in the midst of the Republican Revolution, Democratic Governor Ann Richards lost her bid for re-election against Republican George W. Bush, ending an era in which Democrats controlled the governorship for all but eight of 120 years. Republicans have won the governorship ever since. In 1998, Bush won re-election in a landslide victory, with Republicans sweeping to victory in all the statewide races. Republicans won the Texas Senate for the first time since Reconstruction in 1996.
After the 2000 census, the Republican-controlled state Senate sought to draw a congressional district map that would guarantee a Republican majority in the state's delegation. The Democrat-controlled state House desired to retain a plan similar to the existing lines. There was an impasse. With the Legislature unable to reach a compromise, the matter was settled by a panel of federal court judges, who ruled in favor of a district map that largely retained the status quo. Republicans controlled the Legislative Redistricting Board, which defines the state legislative districts, by a majority of four to one. They used their voting strength to adopt maps for the state legislature that strongly favored them, as Democrats had done before.