Latino voters helped propel record turnout in last week's Texas primaries — with most voting in the Democratic contest — a trend Democrats are watching closely as they try to reclaim ground with the group and pull off an upset win in the red-leaning state's Senate contest.

Over 4.4 million ballots were cast in last week's races, exceeding the 2024 and 2020 presidential primaries. Contributing to the huge turnout were Latino voters, especially in Latino-majority areas like South Texas that trended toward President Trump in 2024.

Relative to their average across 2020, 2022, and 2024, majority-Latino counties saw growth of approximately 37% in their primary votes this year. Other counties in Texas saw closer to a 33% increase in aggregate. Heavily Latino counties like Starr and Hidalgo, which sit along the U.S.-Mexico border, saw some of the biggest jumps — 67% and 51%, respectively.

One reason is that new primary voters were disproportionately Latino. Among Latino early voters, for example, a full third hadn't turned out in a recent primary. And Latino turnout skewed heavily Democratic this year. Both precinct data and individual-level data from the voter file suggest that about three in four Latino voters chose to vote in the Democratic primary over the Republican one — new primary voters even more so.

Democrats have increasingly struggled with Latino voters. Mr. Trump won 48% of nationwide Latino voters in 2024, a 12-point jump from four years earlier, according to a Pew Research Center survey of confirmed voters. In Texas, where Democrats view Latino voters as crucial, some heavily Latino counties along the Rio Grande went from being Democratic strongholds to light-red areas.

But Democrats hope that Latino voters will shift back in their favor this year.

"There is no question this is a red flag for Republicans, a five alarm fire," said Mike Madrid, a political analyst and veteran California GOP strategist who has been a critic of Mr. Trump. "Now can they mitigate it? Yes. Are they doing things to limit the damage? No."

Madrid argues the implementation of tariffs is what started the "downslide" for Republicans among Latino voters. The decline further accelerated, Madrid believes, with immigration raids seen across the country, including in towns along the U.S.-Mexico border. Recent polling shows most Americans — including most Latino respondents — disapprove of Mr. Trump's handling of immigration and feel he is overly focused on putting tariffs on foreign goods.

"They're going to have to distance themselves from key Trump policies, without distancing themselves from Trump," Madrid said. "That is very difficult to do."

On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the Republican party is in a "course correction mode" while addressing the Latino vote in the 2026 midterms. 

"We got a little hiccup with some of the Hispanic and Latino voters for certain because some of the immigration enforcement was viewed to be overzealous and everybody can describe it differently," said Johnson, a Louisiana Republican. "But here's the good news, we are in a course correction mode right now." 

White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair encouraged House Republicans in a closed-door briefing Tuesday to avoid emphasizing "mass deportations" when discussing his agenda ahead of the midterms, according to two sources in the room. Instead, Blair said lawmakers should focus on the administration's efforts to target and remove violent criminals who are in the U.S. illegally, the sources said.

Blair said immigration remains a winning issue for Republicans that helped propel Mr. Trump back to the White House, but he encouraged lawmakers to focus on public safety.

Axios was first to report on Blair's comments.

Asked about Blair's remarks, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CBS News: "Nobody is changing the Administration's immigration enforcement agenda. President Trump's highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities."

A White House official said the administration's immigration policy hasn't changed, and Blair "was just emphasizing the message that we know resonates the most with respect to the policy."

Talarico focuses on Latino voters

High turnout among Latino voters helped boost the Democratic Senate bid of state Rep. James Talarico, who won last week's primary and is looking to be the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas since 1988. Talarico outperformed his Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, in the state's heavily Latino areas. 

Talarico's campaign sought to court Latino voters through early outreach, with some done in Spanish. For that task, Talarico relied on Carlos Eduardo Espina, a Hispanic TikTok influencer with over 20 million followers across social media platforms. Espina — who says he acted as a volunteer — posted pro-Talarico videos, stumped for Talarico and helped the 36-year-old seminary student-turned-politician with Spanish-language social media content.

"We're getting to a point where beyond Talarico, in general, if you want to win in Texas, it's very hard to do so, especially at the state level, without having Spanish communication," Espina told CBS News.  

Espina says he plans on continuing to share Talarico's campaign message and that of other Democratic congressional candidates in hopes of flipping red Texas seats in November through his social media content that reaches millions of Hispanics. 

"I don't consider myself to be a hardline Democrat," Espina told CBS News. "I just think at this moment, with everything going on, the best thing I can do for my community is advocate for a positive change and I try to align myself with not just any Democrat, but Democrats that I feel speak to me and my community."

While it is largely expected that Latino Texans — who make up around 40% of the state's population — will be critical in determining the outcome of the Senate race, among other races in the state, the degree to which it benefits Democrats might depend on who ends up being the Republican Senate candidate. 

In the Republican primary, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn defied expectations and also performed better in Latino-majority areas than his opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. 

"What we do know is there's going to be a very high turnout," Madrid said of November's general election. "It will be more Democratic, but the question is how much more Democratic?"

The role of redistricting 

Last year, at the request of Mr. Trump, Texas Republicans redrew the state's congressional districts, making five Democratic seats more favorable for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms. 

These boundaries were drawn based on voting data, with the gains that Republicans made with Latino voters in 2024 in mind — meaning GOP congressional candidates will need to replicate those gains in this year's midterms in order to hold onto and potentially flip seats. 

One closely watched House race will take place in a majority-Hispanic district that stretches from the Rio Grande Valley to areas east of San Antonio. 

Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz is running for reelection in the 15th Congressional District against Democratic candidate Bobby Pulido, a Tejano music star. The district has heavily favored Republicans in recent years, but Democrats are hoping to flip it as Latino voters swing leftward.

"I hear what their concerns are," De La Cruz told CBS News ahead of last week's Texas primary when asked about Latino constituents. "I also understand that they don't want to return to the chaos and the lack of law and order that was happening under the Biden administration," De La Cruz said. "They asked for a secure border, President Trump has delivered on that secure border, and the next step is to look at enforcement policies that are going to work for all."

The Texas Republican congresswoman has called for bipartisan solutions on Capitol Hill on immigration, like temporary work visas for construction workers, an industry impacted by immigration arrests within the congressional district.   

While the high Latino turnout for Democratic candidates last week could be a problematic sign for Republicans, some caution against drawing too many conclusions from primary results. 

"When you look at some of the historical data in Texas from 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2020, the data has shown more Hispanics vote in the Democratic primary, but in the same years during the general election, Republicans still ended up winning statewide races," said Jorge Martinez, an adviser to the LIBRE Action Texas organization. 

LIBRE Action is supporting a Trump-endorsed Republican congressional candidate, Eric Flores, who is hoping to unseat Democratic incumbent Rep. Vicente Gonzalez. 

Gonzalez represents a border district that was made more favorable to Republicans in last year's redistricting effort. Latino voters in the region are especially concerned about the state of the economy and immigration enforcement, according to Martinez, who emphasizes the importance of conducting on-the-ground voter outreach. 

"Look, if you're not reaching out to our community, you're going to lose," Martinez said. "We've seen over the last few election cycles, Republicans making inroads because of gains they made through outreach. We've been out there for many years, informing on issues, but you also see Democrats trying to do the same because they've realized that they took Hispanics for granted."

The data analyses in this story incorporate voter registration lists, as well as county- and precinct-level election results. The precinct results were scraped from a diverse set of 18 counties that account for approximately half of precincts statewide.