Collin County swung 26 percentage points toward Democrats in U.S. Senate voting between Ted Cruz's first win in 2012 and his re-election in 2024, the largest shift among 16 Texas suburban counties examined in a Texas Tribune analysis published Wednesday.
Denton County was close behind at 24 points. Both counties still voted Republican, and Cruz carried the 16 counties as a group in each race. But his margin across them fell from 33 points in 2012 to 15 points in 2018, the Tribune found.
Growth and diversity
The Tribune's list normally would have left Collin out: a federal health statistics scheme classifies it as a large central metro county rather than a suburb. The reporters included it anyway, citing its closeness to Dallas and Fort Worth, and it is the biggest county on the list at nearly 1.2 million people.
Every county in the group added at least 30% more registered voters after 2012, and the 16 together went from about a fifth of the state's registered voters to almost a quarter in eight years. They are also changing faster than the rest of Texas in other ways. People of color made up 40% of their population in 2014 and close to half by 2024.
Between 22% and 24% of Collin and Fort Bend county residents are Asian, according to the analysis, and Republican gains with Indian American and other Asian voters helped slow both counties' drift to the left in 2024. That year Cruz ran more than five points ahead of his 2018 showing statewide, while Collin and Denton stayed about the same light shade of red.
The analysis also found that the faster a suburban county grew from 2012 to 2024, the more it moved toward Democrats.
