How the Democrats won back the US-Mexico border

The U.S.-Mexico border was one of the regions where Donald Trump enjoyed his strongest support in the 2024 election, a key factor in his return to the White House for a second term. It was historic. In the Rio Grande Valley, at the southeastern tip of Texas, he carried majority-Hispanic counties that had voted Democratic for decades. In Starr County, where 97% of residents are Hispanic, no Republican had won since 1892. It did not last. In Tuesday’s midterm elections, that trend reversed.The U.S.-Mexico border, stretching from Tijuana to the Gulf of Mexico, cuts across 10 congressional districts: two in California, two in Arizona, one in New Mexico and five in Texas. Democratic candidates have won in all 10.Two of those districts, Texas’s 15th and 23rd, flipped from Republican to Democratic control. Every border district where at least half the vote has been counted has shifted toward the Democrats compared with the 2024 presidential election, with a median swing of 23 percentage points, compared with 14.1 points nationwide.A turnaround that began in 2020The shift seen in 2024 did not happen overnight. In the Rio Grande Valley, Democratic support first began to erode in 2020. In Starr County, Barack Obama won by 73 points in 2012; Hillary Clinton by 60; Joe Biden by only five; and Trump carried the county by 16 points in 2024.On Tuesday, however, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico holds a 55.8-point lead there. Zapata, Webb, Maverick, Hidalgo and Cameron counties show a similar pattern. In Hidalgo and Cameron, Democrats are now winning by wider margins than Obama did in 2012, even though this is a midterm rather than a presidential election.In Imperial County, California, the shift came later: Biden still won it by 24 points, while Trump carried it in 2024 by less than one percentage point.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition