Texas Republicans embarked on a mid-decade redraw of the state’s congressional map last year in a quest to win five additional seats and build on the GOP’s recent gains with Latino voters.
Now that strategy is running headlong into rising disenchantment with President Donald Trump and a Latino electorate disgruntled with the state of the economy and increasingly distressed by the harshness of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“Economic anxiety is still the dominant political mood, but the politics have shifted,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “The Latino vote is the biggest swing vote in Texas, and it is trending towards the Democrats, because there’s a perception that the Republicans didn’t take those concerns seriously enough.”
