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President-elect Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz dominated their Texas races this year, widening their margins of victory compared to previous races, making sizable inroads into the state’s border counties, areas traditionally considered Democratic strongholds .

Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by 14 percentage points in Texas, a significant increase from his 5-point lead over President Joe Biden in 2020 and his 9-point lead over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Cruz, meanwhile, at defeated U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Democrat from Dallas, by 9 percentage points, a more comfortable victory than his performance in 2018, when he barely edged out Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

Trump and Cruz’s gains along the border came after the Republican party invested heavily in building support in South Texas, a Hispanic-majority area where Democrats have spent less time campaigning. Trump and Cruz retained their voter bases in red rural counties and increased their share of the border vote. Trump’s support at the border rose from 41% in 2020 to 55% in 2024, while Cruz’s rose from 33% in 2018 to 45% this year.

Trump’s lead over Cruz reflects a common trend of presidential candidates carrying the ticket and receiving the most votes, said Joshua Blank, director of research for the Texas Politics Project. And it also reflects Trump’s unique advantage in winning over young male voters.

“This is another example of how 2020 was a very strange election,” Blank said, noting that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn received more votes than Trump that year. “Coryn’s performance was almost certainly a reflection of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, not a reflection of an underlying shift in the electorate.”

Blank added that the relative strengths of the candidates facing Trump and Cruz may also have played into their different margins of victory. Allred, who was virtually unknown before his Senate campaign, presented himself as a moderate candidate who worked on both sides of the aisle. Cruz tried to portray Allred as a liberal candidate who wanted to let boys play on girls’ sports teams.

Harris, meanwhile, has been seen as a liberal candidate, in part because of her background and her association with the Biden administration.

An October poll by the Texas Politics Project found that 80 percent of likely Republican voters identified Harris as “extremely liberal.” By contrast, only 45 percent of likely Republican voters characterized Allred that way.

“Allred was a more palatable choice for people uncomfortable with Cruz than Harris was for those uncomfortable with Trump,” Blank said.

In large, blue, urban counties like Harris and Dallas, Trump managed to garner more votes than in previous elections, diminishing Harris’ advantage in the state’s most populous regions.

Trump and Cruz also benefited from a decrease in voter turnout this year in democratic cities.

In a handful of counties — including border counties like Webb and Hidalgo, as well as larger, fast-growing areas like Williamson and Tarrant — the gap in support for Trump and Cruz led to a split ticket, where Trump and Allred won both.

For some Republican voters, Allred was a viable alternative to Cruz.

“There are people in his own party who loathe him, who think he’s insincere,” said Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas San Antonio. “People remember he ran to Cancun in 2021” during Winter Storm Uri.