A backlash against President Donald Trump, dissatisfaction with Ken Paxton and frustration over public education combined to produce what Lubbock political strategist Mike Stevens calls a “perfect storm” in Tuesday’s election.
But Stevens says voters with no established history of participating in party primaries were the driving force behind the sweeping Democratic victories across the state.
Stevens, a Lubbock resident and owner of Action Printing, is also the founder and principal of Data To Victory, a Texas political consulting firm. He said he worked on 19 races Tuesday and shared his analysis with Lubbock Lights.
How Tuesday’s Election Changed Control
Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress and the Texas House. Republicans retained the Texas Senate. The new majorities take office in 2027.
View before-and-after comparison
| Chamber | Before | After election |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. House | Republican | Democratic |
| U.S. Senate | Republican | Democratic |
| Texas House | Republican | Democratic |
| Texas Senate | Republican | Republican |
Sources: Associated Press congressional reporting and AP state legislative reporting. Results remain unofficial until certified.
1. The voters who decided the election
“The race was not decided with Republicans and Democrats last night.”
Mike Stevens, political strategist
Stevens said that across Texas counties, between 28% and 47% of Tuesday’s voters had no previous primary-election voting history.
That’s significant because political consultants routinely use primary voting records to identify likely Republicans and Democrats, build polling samples and plan turnout efforts.
“So across Texas in all 254 counties, the range was 28% to 47% of voters had zero previous primary voting history,” Stevens said.
He believes those voters were decisive.
“The biggest majority block of voters was those that had no partisan history, and they decided these races.”
Having no primary voting history doesn’t necessarily mean someone was voting for the first time. It means campaigns had less information about that person’s partisan preferences.
2. Three factors behind the perfect storm
“When you have a turnover of this nature, it requires, in my opinion, the perfect storm,” Stevens said. “That means it’s not any one thing, but it’s about three things that added together.”
First was a backlash against Trump, consistent with the historical tendency for a president’s party to struggle in midterm elections.
“That, a pushback on President Trump, moved in some counties as much as 8% of the known Republican voter over to the Democrat side of the fence,” Stevens said.
Second was resistance to Paxton among Republicans who preferred John Cornyn as their U.S. Senate candidate.
Third was dissatisfaction with public education policy, particularly school vouchers and school funding.
“They weren’t fully happy with what happened with the voucher vote, the funding of public schools, and the outlook going forward to the future,” Stevens said.
3. The eight-year age shift
Stevens said his analysis showed the average age of Texas voters dropped by eight years compared with the electorate he was examining.
“When you move the average age around, even one year of age, that’s like moving a mountain, that’s big,” Stevens said. “And we moved it eight years last night.”
He believes the younger electorate brought more parents of school-age children to the polls, making public education and household finances more influential.
The primary-history percentages, estimated Republican crossover and age comparison are Stevens’ analysis. Lubbock Lights has not independently verified the underlying voter-file calculations.
4. Why Lubbock Republicans survived
Stevens wasn’t surprised that Lubbock’s Republican legislative delegation remained intact, even as Democrats made gains elsewhere.
He said larger metropolitan counties and fast-growing suburban areas experienced some of the biggest shifts.
Collin County, north of Dallas, stood out. “Last night, Collin County went blue,” Stevens said.
Lubbock experienced a smaller shift. Stevens pointed to state Rep. Carl Tepper, who he said finished just under 54% of the vote, a narrower margin than Republicans might ordinarily expect.
“There was a little bit of trickle-down effect, but it didn’t wash out Republicans as it did in those larger counties,” Stevens said.
Stevens also compared Tuesday’s election with 2018, when Beto O’Rourke energized Democratic voters statewide. This time, he said, James Talarico’s candidacy helped Democrats farther down the ballot because the party had recruited candidates for more races.
“They were fully prepared with Democrat candidates in almost all races, top to bottom of the ballot,” Stevens said.
5. What Republicans missed and what comes next
Stevens believes some Republican campaigns failed to recognize that voter priorities had shifted.
He said polling conducted by his firm and fellow political consultant Chris Perkins showed jobs and the economy had overtaken familiar campaign issues such as border security and tax cuts.
“Through our explosive growth in Texas, maintaining jobs in the economy was issue number one,” Stevens said.
“I think some of the Republican candidates failed to embrace the shift in what voters were wanting to hear,” he said. “They stuck on some of the old issues and didn’t address what they needed to locally with the constituency that they represent.”
Looking ahead, Stevens expects candidates to return to a more personal style of campaigning.
“I’m going to predict that we see a moving back to more of a retail politics style environment, where candidates are going door to door, knocking on houses, meeting voters face to face if they’re going to be successful,” Stevens said.
He believes household finances, including the effect of tariffs on consumer prices, will remain central to voters’ decisions.
“In many cases, people vote their pocketbook,” Stevens said.
For Republicans, his advice is to spend less time assuming what voters want and more time asking them.
