New Texans, Latino doubts about Trump cloud Paxton's Senate bid

Texas has gained more than 2.5 million new residents since 2020 — roughly the entire population of New Mexico — reshaping the electorate and injecting new uncertainty into this year's marquee Senate race. Why it matters: Republican Ken Paxton is favored to defeat Democrat James Talarico in November, but the influx of new arrivals — along with fading Latino support for President Trump and booming exurban counties — has scrambled the political math in typically red Texas. By the numbers: Texas added nearly 400,000 residents in 2025, the most of any state, bringing its population to 31.7 million, according to an Axios review of U.S. Census data analyzed by Mendoza Law Firm . Since 2020, Texas has seen about 2.6 million new residents, also more than any other state, with more than two-thirds of that growth coming from people moving from elsewhere in the U.S. or abroad. That five-year gain is larger than New Mexico's entire population. Zoom in: The big unknown is which party the new arrivals favor. Signals are mixed. Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, tells Axios that newcomers tend to be less tied to Texas' long-standing political patterns. That gives Democrats more persuadable voters than they had when the electorate was more stable and Republicans had a stronger hold on it. Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, tells Axios that new residents often fall into two broad camps: "economic migrants" and "political refugees." The first group moved for jobs, lower living costs or family and are more politically mixed. The political types often fled liberal states for lower taxes and more conservative politics. Data from the moving firm HireAHelper provides a snapshot of where new Texans are coming from. Of 265,000 out-of-state moves to Texas between June 2024 and May 2025, 14% came from California, 9% from Florida and 4.5% from Colorado. Between the lines: What makes 202...

Original source: Axios